Shifting the Balance complete
by draxal
Summary: The completed version of Shifting the Balance, originally posted under P.L. Nunn. Kenshin's world is rocked when his family is brutally kidnapped by a nefarious Englishman with ties to Kenshin's past. A gravely wounded Kenshin is joined by Sano in a pursuit that takes them on an epic chase that spans the ocean. Yaoi and non-con warning. Ken x Sano. Ken x Kaouri.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note**

_**I originally started posting this story here about a decade or more ago, lost interest after nineteen chapters, and didn't get back to it for close to ten years. In that time, I changed emails and lost my password for my old FanFiction account, so when I wanted to start posting again a while ago I had to re register under a different pen name. So, after the live action Kenshin movies reignited my love for the fandom, I decided to finish up the story and start a sequal. Since I can post the remaining chapters under my P.L. Nunn account, I'm reposting the entire story with the final chapters under my 'Draxal' pen name, as well as the ongoing sequel. **_

**Shifting The Balance**

_**Tokyo 1884**_

The pull of the market crowds had begun to wane with the falling of the sun. Dusk drew people back towards their homes, it urged shopkeepers to close their doors in preparation for night and the varied and myriad stalls to put up their wares and pull bamboo blinds down over their traveling showrooms. The Takanawa district never entirely fell into slumber - - there was always some portion of the _shitamachi,_ or downtown Tokyo that remained alert and awake, catering to even the latest and most notorious patrons, but, for the most part, the decent folk returned to their families with the coming dark.

A few hopeful salesmen still called out to passerby, proclaiming "tofu for sale" or "baked yams. Stone baked Yams!" Or "fresh Fish, the finest catch from Edo bay." Himura Kenshin absently listened to the song of the salesmen, already in possession of the supplies he'd been sent after, but hesitating at a fish stall, thinking seafood might be a welcome change in menu. He shifted the sack of rice on his shoulder, surveying what was left of the day's catch, lying dead and glassy eyed in the merchant's baskets.

"Fresh fish. Just caught." The wizened old woman manning the stall eyed him with the crafty desperation of a merchant faced with too much stock at the end of her day. "A fish or two for your table?"

"Three," he agreed, almost certain that it was only himself and Kaoru and Kenji for supper tonight. One never knew when Doctor Genzai and the girls would show up, or one of Kaoru's students might stay late after practice. Supper used to be a much more expansive affair - - well, at least when they could afford it - - when Yahiko was in Tokyo, but that young man had left to see the small part of the world available to him within the confines of the empire and had taken his considerable appetite with him. Kenshin missed him. And worried a little, knowing more of the world than a young man not quite eighteen ever could, and more wary of the dangers. But Yahiko had his own path to discover and there was no holding him back.

There were other people he missed - - desperately so at times - - people that had been, for a while, closer than blood, but had chosen to fly away like leaves in the fall. Only the leaves came back - - in one form or another. Miss Megumi visited twice a year. Misao made the pilgrimage from Kyoto regularly, sometimes dragging a quiet, serene Aoshi with her. It was good to see them. Always an occasion to celebrate. But sometimes, it wasn't enough.

Sano hadn't been back. Not once. Almost four years since he'd gone, with the threat of the law nipping at his heels. Sometimes Kenshin wondered if he were dead; felt cold in the center of his being dwelling on it, but was far too familiar with death to deny the plausibility. Far too rational to pretend that the world outside was as placid as the one he had made for himself and his family within the orderly boundaries of the capital city. Not good to dwell on it too much though, because he'd worked too hard for this life he led. Built thick walls around the darkness and the violence that stained his past. He never, ever wanted Kenji to experience the things he had. Never ever, wanted him to know the things he had done.

Shame. It ate at him sometimes, when he looked into those wide, violet eyes, so much the color of his own. Innocence dwelled in those eyes, and love and worship and Kenshin was forever leery of loosing any of those three things. Kaoru knew. She'd known of that fear, the day he'd given the reverse blade to Yahiko. She accepted with relief, he thought, his dismissal of his past - - but she hated his abhorrence of it. She hated that he sometimes hated himself.

It was the fish, he thought, blinking himself back to the here and now of paying the merchant for her wares, that had made him think of old times and Sano. There was nothing that Sano had liked better than baked fish. Well, save maybe a beef pot.

Kenshin smiled wryly, nestling the wrapped fish in the wooden bucket with the rest of the odds and ends Kaoru had sent him out for. He'd gotten distracted at the Nihonbashi bridge, waylaid by the river and the people and the atmosphere. He should have been home an hour ago and would no doubt hear of his tardiness in no uncertain terms from Kaoru. Motherhood had only softened the sharpness of her tongue a small bit and marriage had done very little to curb her flash fire temper. Which was fine, for he'd never wanted to change her, only himself.

He shuffled beyond the business district, sandals kicking up little puffs of dust on the dry road. It was mid-summer and the rains hadn't come for weeks, leaving the grass dry and yellowed and the wells low. He passed a few Furi-uri at the edge of the Takanawa district coming from the residential section, poles over their shoulders, swinging their empty buckets of produce that they carried for housewives to buy for supper. He was almost past the close-set buildings and stalls and onto the more scenic road that led towards the district where the Kenda Dojo and home lay. Still, it was a twenty minute walk or more, which meant that it would be full dark by the time he reached home and Kaoru and Kenji would both be complaining of the late supper; the former no doubt, louder and more coherently than the latter; a three year-old not possessing the breadth of his mother's vocabulary.

There was a shuffle of feet in the dirt, and the soft metallic scrape of a blade sliding from a sheath. The hairs on the back of Kenshin's neck pricked, his fingers tensed on the bucket. He turned his head casually to the shadows at the edge of the road, where a last building created an alleyway between the stone wall facing the long canal. There were shifting shapes in that shadow. A gasping, breathless sound of struggling men. A cry and a curse. Thieves, no doubt, waylaying a passerby. Some innocent dragged into the darkness to be robbed of wealth and possibly life.

Passing it by was beyond him. He had no weapon of his own, but sometimes the mere presence of a witness would be enough to scatter those desperate enough to stoop to petty robbery. He stepped into the shadows of that alley, not bothering to mask the scrape of his sandals, not bothering to lower the sack of rice or the bucket of fish and supplies. There was a gathering of dark shapes. Six men, one pressed against the wall in the center. There was the glint of a short blade. A weathered wakizashi, old and misused, but deadly enough and easily concealed under clothing. The blade pressed against the throat of the man against the wall. An odd man, that. Tall and fair of hair and skin, foreign of feature even in the dark. Kenshin had seen a few westerners, mostly at port, but not generally in alleys beyond the teaming port or business districts.

"Excuse me," he called out. "Is there a problem here?"

Six sets of eyes searched him out in the shadows. A few dark shapes shifted threateningly towards him. Not scampering like poor starving street thieves in the least. Acting more like wolves who had downed prey and had no intention of giving it up. The westerner merely stared, those odd round eyes of his hard to read in the shadows.

"Get out of here, boy," the one with the wakizashi hissed.

In the darkness he might have looked like one, not overly tall and slim, possessing nothing in lines of face that might have betrayed more than three decades of life.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," he said it congenially enough. "You seem to have this man at a disadvantage."

"Mind your own business or else."

Oh, they were creative in their threats. He tilted his head, gauging the other men - - which had weapons and which did not. One had a knife, the other three clubs.

"Get rid of him," the leader growled, and two of the club-bearing ones left the circle around the westerner and advanced up the alley towards Kenshin.

A club arced past his ear and he shifted to one side, swung the shoulder weighted down by the rice into the chest of the other man, put out a foot to tangle in the staggering man's ankles, and the big body hit the ground. All very neatly done. It might have been luck or accidental grace for all the intention he gave of it. Another swing of the club and Kenshin windmilled his arms to avoid it. The bucket came up and slammed under the chin of the club wielder so hard the dull impact of the blow echoed off the stone of the canal wall. The fish went flying, as well as the small package of wasabe powder. He caught the former with the bucket and the latter in his free hand.

"Really," he said helpfully to the others. "I saw policemen just up the street. It might be wiser if you left."

"You're lying."

"No, really - -" he swung around and pointed and the bucket conveniently connected with the temple of the first man he'd tripped, who'd been trying for his feet.

They called him a foul name, or perhaps they were merely cursing the fates. The one with the wakizashi snapped at the others to flee and drew back his blade to finish their victim. The bucket left Kenshin's hand, slammed into the bony wrist of the attacker and rebounded. The blade clattered to the ground along with his supplies and the man cursed and fled into the depths of the alley. Except for the two unconscious men on the ground, and the westerner still leaning against the wall, he had been abandoned. There was the smell of blood in the air though and none of it had been drawn by him.

"Are you all right?" He moved forward, concerned.

"Yes," the westerner said in perfectly unaccented speech.

Kenshin knelt, gathering his groceries back into the bucket.

"I don't think so," he disagreed softly.

There was a bit of blood spotting the ground between the man's boots. But if a man chose to deny injury, out of pride or some sense of honor - - who was he to argue. He picked up the wakizashi gingerly, examining it for blood. It was clean. The sheath was nowhere to be seen. Probably still in the possession of the thief - - if thieves those men had been.

The man looked down at Kenshin, kneeling at his feet, short blade held lightly in his hand. He took a pained breath and reconsidered. "No. Perhaps not. I would have been very much worse, if you had not come. Thank you."

Kenshin looked up, half smiling. "Thanks are not necessary. It was the right thing to do."

"Ah - - right perhaps, but foolish, against five men."

Debating that bit of logic was useless. A change of subject was needed. He rose and had to tilt his head back to look up into the westerner's eyes. "You speak very well - - for a foreigner."

"As do you," the man agreed with an ironic laugh, and pushed himself away from the wall. He gasped, bending over, one hand clutching at his middle. Kenshin put a hand out to steady him.

"I know a doctor that lives not far away. He'll tend you."

He tossed the blade into the canal and heard it hit water with a satisfying plop. The westerner limped along beside him, grunting now and then with pain. He trailed a little blood in his wake, but it did not soak the side of his western jacket or his slim cut- cut western trousers, so it was likely not life-threatening. He would not likely bleed out before reaching Doctor Genzai.

"He didn't cut you with that blade," Kenshin remarked.

"No," the man agreed and was unwilling to explain further, though he tempered his silence on the one subject with information regarding another. "My name is Quinton Winter."

"Himura Kenshin, Mr. Quinton." He had a spattering of familiarity with western honorifics.

"Winter," the westerner corrected with a smile. "It's the other way around in English. My formal name is last."

"English?" Curiosity arose. "From Eng - Land?"

"England. The British Isles. Yes."

"You're a merchant? A trader."

"Yes," Winter agreed. "Though fallen on bad luck, it seems."

Kenshin lifted a brow politely in question. But the man looked away, distracted. He had very pale eyes, so light a gray that they seemed almost silver. Hair that was pale gold and thinning just a little along the top. Heavy, long sideburns, but a clean-shaven chin and upper lip for a westerner. He might have been close to forty-five or fifty. But a healthy, robust fifty. A man that knew physical exertion and reveled in it.

"I'm afraid, I have no money to pay your doctor," Winter said finally, softly. "They took what I had left to me."

"He'll treat you," Kenshin assured the man.

He was very late getting home. Stars twinkled brightly in a sky gone to black velvet. Kaoru was waiting on the front porch of the dojo, tapping her foot in irritation, when he stepped through the front gate.

"Where have you been? Do you know what time - -" The shrillness of her complaint dribbled away. She bit her lip in acute embarrassment as the westerner stepped through the gates on Kenshin's heel. In the light from the lantern at the gate, the man was clearly foreign.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, you've brought someone home."

She crossed her hands in front of herself, contrite for her outburst in front of a stranger and a western stranger at that. Kaoru had a fascination for the west.

"No inconvenience, I prey, lady?" Winter charmed her with a sweeping bow, though it must have pained him. Kenshin had seen the wound in his side. A stab wound through the fleshy part of the hip, just above the bone. A lucky man, Winter, for it not to have punctured vital organs. Kenshin stopped at the foot of the steps looking up at Kaoru, not concerned at the blush on his young wife's cheeks or her wide-eyed examination of the Englishman.

"He was robbed and had no place else to go. I have fish." He extended the offering and she blinked and looked down at the bucket, remembering finally to act the proper wife.

"Of course." She bowed, tail of dark hair sliding over her shoulder. Reached to take the pail from Kenshin's hand and scurried back into the house.

Kenshin chewed his lip, wondering if this contrition on her part boded ill or well for him. He'd find out later in the privacy of their own room.

Kaoru prepared supper and Kenshin truly should have helped if they'd wanted Winter's first meal with them to be more palatable, but Kaoru would have nothing of it, ushering him away with a secret sharp glare that impressed upon him that she wanted to maintain propriety with a guest in the house and for him to go and do husbandly things instead of assisting her in her wifely duties.

Her cooking was a thing based solely on luck. Sometimes it was agreeable, sometimes not. She'd gotten better. Truly she had, but her dumplings tended toward chewy and her rice mushy and more often than not she burned the fish and made the soup too watery or too spicy. So he sat with Winter on the porch at the back garden, waiting on the inevitable.

"Do you mind?" Winter asked, taking out a slim brown stick of tobacco.

"No."

The Englishman offered him one and he shook his head. The man struck a match against the side of the steps. "A very fine house."

"Thank you."

"A dojo?"

"Yes. My wife teaches the Kaiya Kasshin style of swordsmanship."

Winter lifted a pale brow. "Your wife?"

"This was her father's dojo. She inherited and became master."

"A female master. Unusual." Winter blew out a cloud of smoke.

"Kaoru is an unusual woman."

"And you?"

"Me?"

"Do you make it a habit of rescuing beleaguered foreigners in dark alleys - - or was I the exception?"

Kenshin smiled, tossing a pebble into the pond, listening to the fish rise to the surface to investigate. "Only this once - - of late."

"Ah. Fortunate for me then."

The Cat bounded out in a flurry of puffed fur and a discontented hiss. She cast Kenshin an accusing yellow stare before disappearing over the fence. Of course Kenji followed on her furry heels, calling for 'kitty' to come back. But Cat disliked somewhat rough, childish hands stroking her fur the wrong way and even though Cat had been adopted early in the year - - a half-starved, half-grown tabby - - at the insistence of Kenji - - Cat had declared Kenshin her preferred human. Kenji was not overly dejected by the betrayal, being easily distracted by other things, like buzzing dragonflies and curious fish, drifting clouds and the arrangement of dirt in the garden.

With Cat disappeared into the night, Kenji gladly threw himself against his father's back, wrapping short, pudgy arms about Kenshin's neck and crying out. "Da's home. Da's home."

Kenshin swung the little boy around into his lap, grinning helplessly as the child squealed in delight. Finally, after a bout of tickling sensitive spots, he righted the child and pointed out that they had a visitor.

Large violet eyes went wide and serious. "Kenji, this is Mr. Winter. He's our guest. He's from across the sea to the west from a land called England. Mr. Winter, this is my son, Kenji."

It always made him proud to say it. Always made him swell up inside when he thought about this - - this most glorious thing that he and Kaoru had made together. The creation of a life, when he'd responsible for the taking of so many.

The child continued to stare. Then lifted one short arm and pointed. " Funny eyes."

"That's not nice," Kenshin chided, embarrassed at the directness.

Winter laughed, delighted. "My God, he looks just like you. A little darker, perhaps, but the resemblance is amazing. Strange enough to find one person here with such hair and eyes - - but two. I wonder at your genealogy."

Kenshin blinked, baffled.

"Genealogy." Kenji mimicked the odd word with nary a mispronunciation, laughed at his achievement and looked up to see if Kenshin had heard and approved.

"Merely a matter of bloodlines," Winter explained, seeing Kenshin's confusion. "Why some people's eyes are brown and some blue - - or in your case violet, I'd say."

"Oh, well, I'd hardly know that, Mr. Winter," Kenshin admitted.

Kaoru called them for supper before Winter could spew forth more incomprehensible words that Kenji could master before his father. Winter had perfect manners for a westerner, better by far than Kenji who tended to mimic Yahiko's early eating habits by grabbing food without thought, though he spilled a great deal more than Yahiko ever let escape the endless pit that his mouth had led into. Kaoru's rice balls were not quite round, but they clung together admirably. The fish was not burned and the soup was well flavored. She'd put some effort and concentration into the meal, which should have been somewhat irritating, since she never got three out of three dishes right if it where only him she were cooking for.

"You were robbed?" Kaoru had held off as long as she could, all the way through the soup and the rice and most of the fish. One could almost see the waves of intense curiosity radiating off of her.

"A horrible experience." Winter shuddered delicately. "But at least I came away from it with my life, which I might not have if not for your husband."

"Yes. Yes." She waved a hand, negating Kenshin's contribution as a given. "You're from England? Did I hear you're from England?"

"Yes, Lady Kaoru. From a place called Birmingham."

"Birmingham," she said in awe. "Is it very beautiful? I've read about England in the newspapers."

"Have you? How wonderful. Yes, it is very beautiful. This time of year, I think, it would be very misty and green."

"Are you a merchant or a diplomat?"

"A merchant, I'm afraid, that has fallen on rather bad luck. A string of bad luck actually. I find myself at somewhat of a disadvantage."

"What happened? If you don't mind my asking?"

Kenshin sipped his tea, musing that Kaoru would have asked whether Winter minded or not.

"Ah, where to start. I've been here in Japan for many years off and on. Almost twenty years, I daresay, learning the culture and the people. It's so much better now for a westerner, under the Meiji rule than it was in the Tokugawa era."

"I'm three." Kenji held up three fingers, declaring this important bit of news with solemn pride.

Kenshin smiled behind his cup and Kaoru frowned, shushing Kenji at his interruption of their guest. Kenji yawned, not overly chastised and leaned in against his mother's side.

"Ah," Winter said. "Practically grown."

"Please, go on," Kaoru urged, leaning forward to refill tea cups.

"A few years ago, I made an investment in a project that failed rather - - disastrously. Attempting to recoup from that, I put the remainder of my funds into the outfitting of a ship that most regretfully sank off the coast of Japan in the storms last spring. I've been waiting for funds from home since then and increasingly fear that my letters have gone astray."

"Well, I'm sure it takes a very long time for messages to get all the way to your England and then back again," Kenshin said.

"Rather," Winter agreed bleakly. "In the meanwhile, I find myself in dire straits. And now robbed of what funds I had left to me - - - I'm afraid that a foreigner even in the enlightened Meiji capital will be hard pressed to support himself."

"Oh, no," Kaoru said. "I'm sure there's something you can do. Why, you could teach English until your message arrives. I'm sure there are lots of people who would love to learn about the west."

"Do you think?" Winter lifted a politely dubious eyebrow.

"Of course! Why I'd love to learn. You could teach here! You could stay here! He could stay here, couldn't he, Kenshin, and teach English to students? What a wonderful idea."

She was immensely proud of the notion. Winter blinked at her. Kenshin did. Kenji snored softly away, head in her lap.

"Yes, I can see it now - -" She was rubbing her slim hands, already picturing the envy the Kenda school might get, having an Englishman in residence teaching western things. They would be the talk of the neighborhood and they hadn't been that in some time - - not since rumors of the Battousai had began to dwindle.

Kenshin would just as well they not be the talk of the town, but Kaoru had the dojo to think about - - Kaoru thought about money a great deal more than he ever did and chided him for his lack of concern. Where did one expect food to come from if not from money and where the money if not from students? Oh, he had heard that time and again as the students dwindled now and then as the young men found other interests than the discipline of the sword to attract them. After all this was the peaceful era of the Meiji. There was no revolution. There was no war. The violence hid in the shadows - - at least in Tokyo and it was easy to pretend it no longer existed. But, there were always those who wanted to learn. Always a roster of students, no matter how small, to contribute to the dojo. It was just in Kaoru's nature to worry.

"That - - would be fine." He gave his assent when Winter looked his way, even though Kaoru had made up her mind on the issue and was already plotting how to make best use of it.

Winter was polite and mannerly and well spoken - - but some tiny inkling of unease rippled through Kenshin at the thought of the man staying under their roof. Perhaps it was the avoidance of the issue of the wound and how it was gotten. It had been no dagger wound, such as the other blade wielding thief had carried. It was clean and deep and most certainly made by a finer blade than those men had possessed. He supposed Winter could have had the most terrible of luck and been set upon twice, but it seemed unlikely. The area was not teeming with cutpurses - - much less gangs of them.

Kaoru prepared a room for the Englishman while Kenshin carried a far gone Kenji to bed, then returned to clean up the supper dishes and set the room right. He collected the last few scraps of fish to put out for Cat. With Kenji safely gone the tabby padded leisurely back into the garden to claim her supper. Cat wound around his ankles, brushing against the hem of his hakama, trying her best to make him give up his pursuits and focus on her most esteemed self. He very deftly avoided her. He went about shutting the dojo down for the night, extinguishing lanterns, making sure the gates were closed tight, making sure the blinds were down over windows in case the much needed storm chose tonight to hit. Cat followed him on his rounds, a silent observer to the ritual. He paused by the garden in the moonlight and noted that a few errant weeds had sprung up between cabbage heads and cucumber plants.

He'd make a point of weeding tomorrow.

Kaoru was braiding her hair when Kenshin finally wondered in, Kenji's cat trailing at his heels. They moved much alike, the two of them, silent and supple with hidden secrets beneath a surface of lithe sinew and muscle. Kaoru was never so graceful, never so efficient in her movements. Annoying that her husband glided with more grace across the floor than she ever could. Annoying that he was more collected than she was in the face of esteemed visitors. She had so wanted to impress the Westerner. She wasn't sure she hadn't made a fool of herself.

"Do you think he'll stay?" she asked, hushed, for voices carried between thin walls and the Englishman was only a few chambers down. Kenshin shrugged, shedding hakama and gi and hanging them neatly over a clothes dowel before slipping into a thin sleeping robe. He folded to his knees next to Kaoru, tying off her braid for her, smiling across at her with that suspiciously opinionless expression he sometimes effected.

"I don't know. I'm sure he'll tell us."

"It could be so good for the school." She leaned forward, fingers touching his thigh. "So many people are fascinated by the west now days. Word will get around. If he charges for students - - then he can pay us rent - - wouldn't that be nice for a change - - a border that actually paid rent."

"That's hardly nice." He beetled his brows a little, very much aware of which border she spoke of.

"Well you don't have to pay now. Much," she clarified.

One of his drawn brows rose. She grinned at him. "Well, I have a good feeling."

"He is very mannerly and pleasant," Kenshin admitted. "He speaks like a finely educated man, even if he is a foreigner.'

"I wonder where he learned? He said he'd been in Japan for twenty years. That's a very long time."

"It is."

"Almost longer than I've been alive."

"No wonder he speaks so well. He's been doing it longer than you."

"Are you saying I don't speak well?" She gave him a look. Sometimes his blatant honesty hid unwitting insult.

"No. That's not what - - " He tried to back out of that blind alley and she waved a hand to dismiss it, more interested in the Englishman. "I think I'll spread the word at market and most certainly at the tea house - - oh and I can get Dr. Genzai to tell his patients and - -"

"Aren't you getting ahead of yourself. Weren't you just wondering if he would even stay? He might have other things to do. He is a merchant after all."

"You heard what he said. He's penniless until support from his home comes. His ship sank. So what better things does he have to do? Don't you want him to stay?" She turned to look at him, worried that he might not.

He shrugged, slid down on the tatami mat with his arms under his head. Pensive. Thoughtful.

"What?" she leaned over him, braid trailing over her shoulder, wanting more than that look for an answer. His lashes fluttered shut, dark and thick against pale skin, then open again, bringing with them a fleeting smile.

"Nothing. If you want him to stay, then I have no problem. I can see you see the possibility of many yen in the future if he is here - - so who am I to argue against such prosperity?"

She frowned, uncertain if she were being teased. Sometimes, even after all this time, he could be annoyingly hard to read. But she trusted, for the most part, that none of his obscurities were of threat to her.

"Are you implying that I'm greedy?" she knew very well he had, but being well aware of the possibility of such a condition, she was not as truly offended as she let herself sound.

"Well - - no. Maybe. A little, yes." He meandered his way towards the truth.

"Oh, so that's what you think of me?" She swung a leg over his hips, glaring down and shaking a fist in mock threat. He smiled up, no doubt enjoying the view and the feel of her rump against his groin.

"You make a fine Imperialist, Kaoru." His hands slid up under the hem of her robe, fingers grazing along her thighs.

"Darned right," she agreed, then gasped a little when he found a sensitive spot and leaned back so that he might have a better angle at it. He was very, very good with his hands, her Kenshin. She bit her lip, thoughts of the dojo's monetary gain momentarily scattering. They shifted about a bit, ending up under the light summer covers.

"We have to be quiet," she murmured, and he blinked at her from behind tousled auburn hair. "The Englishman. He's just a few chambers down."

One had to be conscious of guests. What Kenji would sleep blithely though in the next chamber, the westerner might not. One hardly wanted him lying awake, roused by the sound of their lovemaking. He might be offended, after all, and take his precious knowledge of the west to some other house.

Chapter Two

The Englishman had opted to stay. At least until his fortunes took a turn for the better. Kaoru immediately spread the word of his residence and services offered and within two days the dojo saw more interested students than it had in the last month. Of course, they were not here to learn the Kamiya kasshin style of swordsmanship, but to cluster around the Englishman and hear about the west in his perfect, aristocratic tones. Kaoru was first among them, when she wasn't teaching her own distracted students.

"Do you know what dog means in English?" she would ask Kenshin and he would dutifully ask what and she would say it and look proud of herself, even though Kenji was picking up words faster by far than she.

He weeded the vegetable garden that first day, while Kaoru was spreading word of the Englishman and the Englishman was settling himself in. Kenji and Dr. Genzai's youngest granddaughter Suzume kept him company, the eight year old girl content to watch over three year old Kenji. The boy knew he wasn't supposed to trample the plants in the garden, but sometimes distraction won out and he'd chase a fluttering butterfly, or decide to run over and attack his father.

The Englishman came out and smoked his tobacco and watched for a while; spoke a bit about the dry weather and the pitiful shape it had left the vegetable garden. Kenshin concurred, having to pull water up from the very low well to give the plants any relief at all. He initiated very little conversation and the Englishman seemed content at the silence. Other than the buzz of excitement that hovered about Kaoru, life at the dojo was little changed. Winter was a quiet, unobtrusive presence. Nothing to create unease. Nothing to encourage disharmony. Kaoru was on her best behavior, demure and sweet tempered, even when she burned the rice and seared the sweet potatoes that Kenshin had pulled up from the garden that day. He asked, softly, that first night, where his wife was and who was this proper impostor. She'd taken a moment to ponder the depth of his gentle jibe, before smiling and proclaiming that 'she certainly had no notion, but oughtn't he be ashamed of himself for sleeping with strangers?'

Of course the next day, the peace became more turbulent with the onslaught of the curious. Hisa the seamstress brought her two daughters, Hama and Otsu to see the Westerner. Junichi the retired fisherman who lived with his granddaughter down the street came hobbling up on the arm of his great grandson, Juzo. The Araki children, all friends of Ayame and Suzame came to cluster about and hear the Englishman speak. Kaoru told them all, with Winter's permission, of course, that he would consent to teach English for a very reasonable price. It was agreed upon, over supper that evening, that the Kenda school would receive half of those earnings for lodging and food.

Kaoru sent Kenshin out the next day, with a purse of newly acquired coins, for tofu and fresh fish and even a bottle of sake, for Winter had confessed a fondness for it. So with Kenji and Suzume for company - - Ayame, the elder of Dr. Genzai's two granddaughters being all of eleven now and old enough to help her grandfather with his work - - he set out for market.

Another fine day, if not dry. The leaves rustled brittley on the trees. A passing cart made little swirls of dust rise in the still air. The smell of wood smoke drifted lazily on the air, someone somewhere, smoking fish. There was a woodworker at the end of this street, who was working on a pair of very fine gates that Kenshin had admired for some weeks now in passing. He thought the gates of the Dojo in need of repair, if not replacement and that in no small part a fault of his. Trouble had followed him up to a few years past with an unerring talent. He seemed to have shaken the trail. It seemed his enemies were either dead, or unaware of his existence here. Nice to keep it that way. Nice not to have to sleep with a sword across his shoulder in fear of assassin's in the dark. Nice to have a garden plot to manage and a dojo to keep in good repair. Nice to have a wife who blamed him for no sins of the past and a child who might never know of them. Sometimes, though, on a clear day, he'd look up and see the mountains, misty and distant, north of Tokyo and his blood would sing a bit for want of something different. Something to make his pulse surge and his heart pound a little faster than it did during the daily routine life had become. But only sometimes.

Maybe if Sano were here - - it might have been different. With Sano around life was never so neatly complacent. Even if it were only trying to avoid getting in the middle of Sano and Kaoru's arguments. Yes, he missed Sano very much. Wondered if he went and asked - - if Saitou might have heard any rumors of his life or death. Saitou tended to be abreast of a great many things.

"He's very nice, don't you think, uncle-Ken?' Suzume remarked.

He blinked down at her, distracted, wondering which he in particular the girl was speaking of. She was beaming up at him, Kenji's small hand clutched firmly in hers, since the three year old tended to have a fascination with the edge of the canal. Quite convenient that one of them had been keeping an eye on the child. He felt remiss.

"Umm. Yes? Who?"

Suzume grinned at him. "Mr. Winter, of course."

"Oh. Yes." One had to agree with the observation. There were no hints to prove otherwise.

"And very tall."

"That he is, Suzume," he agreed without reservation on that count.

"He likes honey in his tea," Suzume announced and made a face. "And milk! He's also a very strange man."

"Yes." One had to agree there as well.

"Grandfather is thinking of making a match for Ayame," Suzume said, changing tactics with the alacrity of youth.

Kenshin glanced down at her curiously. "So soon. She's only - - ten? Eleven?"

"Eleven. And it's only a marriage agreement. She won't marry until she's all grown. Fourteen. Grandfather said."

Oh. Marriage at fourteen was hardly surprising. Girls were married younger - - or forced into prostitution. Suzume talked about the husband to be and how excited Ayame was at the prospect. Kenshin listened and thought that time was unmerciful in its passage.

"What's that?" Kenji was pulling at Suzume's hand, pointing excitedly at the canal where it ran under a stone bridge. Brush and debris had formed a dam of sorts under one low arch, a natural net that caught all the flotsam coming downstream.

There was something pale and bloated caught in the slime covered rubbish. He thought, at first, before he truly looked, that it might have some large fish, washed in from the bay. It smelled of death, lodged half out of water in the warm sun. But fish did not have long matted black hair, or swollen white limbs.

Kenshin grabbed Kenji up before the boy could scramble over to the edge of the canal. Before he could make out wide staring eye sockets that peered out from beneath tangled hair. The fish had eaten out one eye. The flesh around the mouth had also been ripped and torn. A few small crabs scuttled over the cold skin, jubilant in such a meal. Not a pleasant sight at all.

"Suzume. Take Kenji back home."

The girl stared, wide eyed, small mouth open. Kenshin turned her face away, one hand on her cheek.

"No reason to look. Just take Kenji home."

She nodded, taking Kenji's hand and pulling the unwilling three year old down the lane behind her. He watched them walk away. Turned back when they were of a distance and stared grimly at the corpse. It was female. There was, he thought, a second body lodged under the current, beneath the first. He walked over the bridge and into market, looking for the telltale uniform of the city police.

Of course they were never as prevalent when one wanted them as when one wished they weren't about. He found one, eventually, loitering outside a teahouse, passing time with the attractive young hostess. He'd rather have avoided doing more than alerting the authorities of the gruesome discovery, but it was never so easy. He ended up in the midst of a gathering of the uniformed city police, telling and retelling the simple bad fortune he'd had on finding the bodies. He preyed for the luck that none of these young officers would recognize his name and that he'd been released to go on his way before any older officer's arrived that might be more familiar with him. Himura the Battousai was as good as dead and he'd as well keep it that way.

There were three bodies, as it turned out. The two that had been easily visible from the surface of the canal and yet another lodged beneath the water. Quite as naked as the day they were born. It made them unidentifiable. He saw, as they pulled them out, amidst the gasps and whispers of the gathered civilians, the source of demise. They had been sliced up rather efficiently. A single stab up through the woman's ribcage that had no doubt ruptured her heart. The two men had a few more wounds - - taken, most certainly, as they'd tried to defend themselves against their killer. No amateurish wounds those. The work instead of a man or men who knew how to use a blade. It made him doubly wish to hasten from this place, even though, he thought dourly, his name would unquestionably reach ears more familiar with it than these.

When their attention turned more fully to the examination of the bodies and left him, he took the opportunity to slip into the crowd on the market side of the canal bridge. No reason not to get supplies for dinner merely because he'd been waylaid by circumstance, though his appetite was somewhat depleted. The quivering white blocks of tofu were most unappealing, floating in the water of his pale.

He took another bridge home, a longer path, and reached the dojo as the summer shadows were just beginning to lengthen.

"What is this I hear about bodies in the canal?" Kaoru took him aside and whispered, concerned.

"Victims of robbery, most likely." Kenshin put the supplies in their places.

"Suzume said Kenji found them?" Very worried then, about what her child had seen.

Kenshin turned somber eyes her way. "He did. I don't think he realized what they were - - but, such things can't be hidden from him forever. Death happens."

She bit her lip, not happy. Kaoru was pragmatic about most things, but where it concerned her child - - she did not always reason properly. "He doesn't have to know about such things yet. Don't mention anything else about it to him. He'll forget."

"His mother runs a dojo and teaches an art of swordsmanship," since she persisted on denying reality, he found the need to state a bit of it blatantly. "His father was a manslayer of notorious repute. Keep the simple fact of death from him now and we may regret it in years to come."

"I don't teach the Kamiya Kasshin style of sword for the purpose of killing. Far from it. And you're not a manslayer anymore. So they are both moot points and you know it." She was angry now, and defensive and he hadn't meant for her to be either.

"I'll start supper," Kenshin said softly. "It's my turn."

It was not an argument either of them could win. Equitably, she let him change the subject. She left him to return to the porch outside the dojo where Winter sat entertaining the children who remained with stories of the west. She'd shooed them all home by the time the meal was ready, not willing to feed the mouths of the curious. It was only the four of them, sitting by the light of a paper lantern in the dusk, sipping tea and eating miso soup and grilled vegetables.

"Your hospitality is overwhelming," Winter said, sipping his sweetened tea. "I could not have wished for better, devoid of options as I am. My thanks for this roof, and this food."

"Kenshin did the cooking tonight," Kaoru admitted with a shy, almost apologetic smile Kenshin's way. "He's better than me."

"I'm not, really," Kenshin said. "Kaoru is a wonderful cook."

He uttered the exaggeration smoothly and Kaoru blushed and seemed grateful for it. Winter looked between them, amused. Kenji hardly noticed at all, engrossed in picking apart a rice ball and tempting an uninterested Cat with grains of rice. Cat much preferred fish and since tonight's meal was meatless, Cat sat safely on a chest across the room, content to ignore the humans who inhabited her domain.

Afterwards, when Kaoru had put Kenji to sleep and the mess from supper had been cleaned, she poured Winter and Kenshin sake and sat on the edge of the porch with them, the ceramic bottle in her lap, the three of them listening to the crickets and the frogs make a serenade of the night. It was a thing he and Kaoru did alone together most frequently - - minus the sake. Winter's sharing of it - - was uncomfortable. At least to Kenshin. Kaoru seemed at peace. Kaoru was happy, the incident with Kenji and dead bodies put behind her.

And so the days progressed. The heat remained a constant and the lack of proper rain. A few light showers kept the crops from dying completely but the ground remained hard and dry and the wells ran dangerously low. The shallow well in the dojo became stingy with its bounty and trips needed to taken to the deeper, common well the neighborhood shared. The Englishman had seven students who came for a few hours each day, eager to learn his western language and his western lore. Kaoru taught her own students and Kenshin kept the dojo in good repair, took meticulous care for his garden, walking to the deep public well each day for life-giving water to feed the struggling plants. One almost wished for the torrential rains that would likely drown the crops, in favor of the drought.

Kaoru and Kenji learned bits and pieces of English. Kaoru could say passable sentences, according to Winter. He flattered her unmercifully and she basked in it, but the flattery had no taste of flirtation to it, so Kenshin ignored it, content with Kaoru's happiness.

Three weeks into the Englishman's stay and Kenshin drowsed in the heat of one tranquil afternoon, in the shade of the back garden porch while the Englishman gave his lessons. Cat draped herself, as usual, across his lap, content and vibrating softly with purrs.

"You seem to have a way with animals, as well as plants."

Kenshin blinked, heart thumping in the shock that he hadn't heard the Englishman's footsteps. He'd only been grazing the surface of true sleep and should have sensed the man's presence long before his long shadow fell over him.

"What?"

"Your neighbor's gardens wither, and yet yours thrives. Your cat is supremely fond of your company."

"Oh. Well. She's Kenji's cat, really." One had to admit the facts if not the reality.

Winter laughed and squatted, reaching out a hand to stroke Cat's soft fur. Cat slitted one eye and hissed. Winter pulled his hand back. "No. I think she is yours."

The hand moved, fingers raised to Kenshin's face. So quick and so light a movement that it took Kenshin off his guard. An unexpected grazing of callused fingers of the faint scars on his cheek. "How did you come by these?"

It was rude to ask so bluntly, Kenshin thought. Ruder still to lay a finger, no matter how lightly upon him. One could only excuse so many things because of foreign differences. The question, he could tolerate. Winter's touch - - He lifted his own arm, smoothly brushing the Englishman's hand aside.

"A very long time ago. Before Kaoru and Kenji."

"They lend you a certain - - character." Winter regarded him, his hands now carefully crossed on his knees. "Without it, I think you'd be rather - - too pretty. No offense, of course."

". . . . . . Of course." He could not force the smile.

He was not unaware of his appearance. It had worked as an advantage to him once, many years ago, the almost feminine contours of his face. There had been a time when a moment's underestimation, a moment's hesitation had lent a great deal of advantage his way. But then, his reputation grew and no one believed the facade any longer. He had not changed that much - - physically - - from that boy, who had stained himself in so much blood he sometimes still saw it on his skin. Mentally - - philosophically - - he was a completely different person. He was not - - he liked to believe - - dangerous anymore. He was a husband and a father and as such, one ought not to be feared because of the dark reputation of yesteryears. One truly did like to think such thing, even if he didn't always believe it.

So he managed a smile, an inclination of his head and an attempt to change the subject to something other than himself. "Kaoru is very grateful for your teaching. She says things to me now, that I find quite unintelligible, and is immeasurable pleased with herself for it."

"She is an intelligent woman. A quick student, though I have to admit to my newness at teaching. With a more patient teacher, I'm sure she'd be even more fluent. You have no interest in learning a phrase or two in English?"

Back to him. It made him uncomfortable. The man's unflinching stare did. He smoothed Cat's fur and shrugged. "No. I know everything about the west, that I need to know."

"Ah, you sound somewhat bitter." Winter was not offended. Kenshin hadn't thought anything resembling bitterness had crept into his voice.

"The advent of the west has caused much violence and bloodshed."

"Change often does," Winter agreed mildly. "Change is not always bad and most often beneficial."

"Yes," Kenshin had to agree with that. "You are most likely right. But it doesn't change the fact that I have little need to learn your English."

Winter smiled, a wide glimpse of white teeth. A predator's toothy smile, it occurred to Kenshin, for no particular reason. A smile to cover disagreement, or divergence of purpose. Odd that he thought so, when Winter had shown nothing but regard for them.

"I think," he said, gently displacing Cat from his lap. "That I've dallied long enough. I've a trip or two to the public well, if I want to keep my garden green."

"Do you need an extra set of hands?"

"No. Thank you all the same."

"Very well. Perhaps I'll take a walk to the docks and see if any word from home has come for me."

"I wish you luck, then."

Winter rose, that grin back on his face. "Eager to see me gone, then?"

He was being baited, and he was not entirely sure if it was in all good humor, or if there was something else behind it.

"Eager to see your good fortune return, Mr. Winter, that is all."

Kenshin, if Quinton Winter was any judge, and Quinton Winter had come to be, over the years, a very astute judge of men's intentions and motives, hidden or otherwise.

Of course, his host had confounded him for a bit. An enigma and Winter had a fascination for riddles. He offered a façade, polite and good natured and somewhat oblivious, for the most part, only now and then giving hints to the depths that lay beneath. And not so young as he seemed, Himura Kenshin, despite that creaseless face. Winter would never have guessed if he had not have asked the woman. Kaoru's tongue was not tight. She was open with her information. She was pretty and bright, and as he had told her husband, very quick student. In a little over three weeks she had picked up enough rudimentary English to speak in halting, simple sentences. She would prove immensely valuable to his needs.

His fortune had improved the very day Kenshin had intervened in the alley. He still had not decided whether it had been luck or skill that had prevailed that evening. Certainly, Kenshin had shown no singular skill afterwards, no interest at all in his wife's teachings. But he had a certain inherent grace of movement. A fluidity of movement that was economical and pleasing - - but it might have merely been a natural trait. Might merely have been a grace that went hand in hand with that face and that lean, symmetrical body.

Truth to tell, though Winter had a definite need for the young woman, his eye was attracted more often than not, to her husband. His tastes tended towards the youth of the more masculine gender, and though Kenshin might have been only a decade or so his junior, he still looked the part of a younger man and appearances, after all, were as important as reality in some cases.

It was Winter's demon, those perverse tastes, and he had learned to live hand in hand with it long ago, learned, in point of fact, to enjoy it without remorse. He enjoyed his conversations with Kenshin. Enjoyed the ubiquitous baiting that Kenshin suspected, but never quite fully realized. An honest man, Winter thought. An honorable one. Whatever his façade hid, it wasn't the sort of deception that was as close to Winter as his very blood and bone.

That honesty made him all the more appealing. What a shame to have to kill him. But such was life and the hard choices therein. His need of the girl was primary and that need could not be interrupted by her husband come seeking her out. If the Erizawa bitch hadn't been so nosy, he never would have come to this. But she'd discovered the alliances he held outside of her esteemed and most honorable father, and threatened to destroy the totality of what Winter had been working at for six years now, by the simple act of telling. He couldn't allow it.

Didn't allow it. He'd taken her through the heart in a single blow and dispatched her loyal bodyguards with little more effort. He had not spent over half his life in Japan and not picked up the more useful techniques of killing. That necessary act had lost him the connection he needed to convince his backers in England that this foray was worthwhile. It had been the word of Erizawa's daughter that would seal the pact. It had been her presence and her signature in place of her traditionalist, ex-shogun father that would convince his peers in England that the alliance was a sound one.

But really, would they know one Japanese girl from the next. All they needed was the illusion. Appearances were so very important, after all. A girl that spoke a spattering of English. A girl who looked the part of a shogun's daughter. A girl with something to hold over her head; a red-headed brat who was the image of his father.

The perfect solution to his problem. All of his alliances intact, with Erizawa none the wiser of his daughter's demise and Winter's yakuza connections still secure. The yakuza could have cared less that a wealthy, former shogun was willing to back the alliance, but Erizawa would have backed out in a second if he'd known of the yakuza involvement. Erizawa was honorable to a fault, though greedy for a return of the power that the Meiji government had torn from him and those like him. The alliance that would grant Winter and his western backers sole rights of trade in Edo bay, would make all of them wealthy and powerful beyond their dreams.

It was only a matter of time. Only the matter of arranging a few judicious killings to cover his tracks. One hardly wanted word of his stay getting back to Erizawa. The students he'd been tolerating didn't matter. They knew nothing of him, other than the fact that he was a misplaced merchant. The old doctor and his granddaughters knew more, having spent many a supper hour with them at the dojo and being subject to Kaoru's gossiping. When the time came, he'd set the yakuza after them. It would look like a robbery in the night.

It would look the same here, at the Kenda school. In the meanwhile, he smiled and laughed and ingratiated himself into the girl's good graces. It was, after all, only a matter of time.

Chapter Three

The rains came like the answer to a prayer. One day, dry, heat laden air and the next - - a body woke to coolness and the spattering of moisture that blew in from the open window. It was early enough that Kaoru could not be roused, even by a few errant drops of water, so Kenshin quietly rose, pulled on a house kimono and padded out onto the porch to watch the earth soak up the much needed rain. Stepping out into it would be foolish, no need to get a perfectly dry robe wet - - but whimsy overcame reason, and he stepped barefoot out into the yard and let the cool downpour coat his skin and plaster his loose hair about his face and neck.

He'd cut it three years ago when Kenji was born. One more testament of the life he'd turned away from. No need to wear it tied back anymore. Another whim on his part. He'd surprised Kaoru that day. Left her speechless for a few precious moments before she'd wailed over the loss. She'd understood, though.

It was a little longer now. Below his collar and his bangs were a mass that shadowed his eyes. Wearing it a little long, enough to cover tell tale scars, didn't bother him. Time perhaps to get Kaoru to trim it, though, but a little nostalgia made him cherish the length for the time being.

He sat under the overhang of the porch at the back garden, watching the rain make ripples in the koi pond with only Cat for company until Kenji woke and tottered out, tousled and unkempt from sleep. The boy immediately made to run into the rain, until his father detained him, knowing very well, that it would not only be water, but mud that stained sleeping robes that he had only yesterday washed. Kenshin got a wail and a foul glare for disturbing the fun, then another one from Cat when he suggested the child play with her instead. When Cat bounded away, the mournful cries of rebellion woke Kaoru, who appeared in short order, sleepy-eyed and yawning.

"What's wrong, Kenji?"

The child pointed one chubby finger at Kenshin and let out an inarticulate wail. Kaoru gave Kenshin a reproving look and he gestured helplessly at the rain.

"Did daddy not let you go play in the rain?" Kaoru said in baby talk, welcoming the pouting child with open arms. The tears dried up in place of a mother's arms. Kenshin blinked, wondering what magic she had, that he did not.

"You'd get all wet and cold and probably get sick, then Dr. Genzai would have to make you take some awful tasting medicine and you wouldn't like that, would you? I'd feel just terrible, if you had to swallow something so icky."

That bit of logic struck home. Kenji looked at the rain, looked back to his mother and shook his small head solemnly. She smiled over Kenji's head in victory at Kenshin and he shrugged, shaking his head in amazement at her talent.

It was a lazy day, with the rain. Only one of Kaoru's students came, and Winter sent the few that came to him home, claiming a bit of ill-health. There was no gardening to be done, no washing, no repairing of the ceramic shingles that had come loose from atop the bathhouse. Dr. Genzai kept Suzume at home today, so Kenji had no one to play with other than Cat, and nothing other to do but worry his parents with his boundless energy. Kenshin's patience, as a general rule, far outshone Kaoru's, but on this particular afternoon, after spending the whole of the day cooped inside with a testy Kenji and the Englishman's dubious humor, he was more than willing to volunteer to go, when Winter suggested a professionally prepared meal. Winter had a taste for sushi and offered to treat, if someone might be kind enough to walk the short distance to the small restaurant at the edge of their neighborhood and pick it up. Already feeling ill, the man hesitated to risk the weather and make his condition worse. A reasonable attitude, and they had not had sushi for a while. It would make for a nice change.

So Kenshin braved an evening gone prematurely dark with cloud cover and rain. Walked under the dubious protection of the umbrella Kaoru had given him, and thought the fresh smell of rain in the air a wonderful thing. He was one of few people out on such an evening. A few drenched Furi-urihurried past him, poles angled over their shoulders, a man pulling a cart laden with vegetables under a tarp. A wet, sorry looking dog that trotted up to Kenshin as he walked and sniffed the hem of his hakama, no doubt scenting Cat. They passed ways equitably.

The restaurant was empty of patronage and Kenshin stood against the open door, watching the rain as the young man behind the counter prepared his order. Half an hour later, he carried the bamboo box of sushi home under one arm, the waxed paper umbrella balanced over his shoulder in the other. His sandals were coated with mud, as was the hem of his hakama. He opened the gates at the front of the dojo against a torrential gale of rain-laced wind. Stood there for a second with his back to them, the umbrella held like a shield before his face while the wind lashed at him. Then it gave a gusty sigh and changed direction. It was no less wet, but at least rain wasn't driven into his eyes.

The lanterns on the porch had gone out, extinguished by the wind, no doubt. He thought nothing of it, more interested at the moment, in setting the box of food on the porch out of the rain and kicking off his sandals and immersing his feet in the shallow pale of water by the porch steps. It only occurred to him, after he'd taken that first step onto the flagstone leading to the steps that the lanterns inside the dojo were also dark. He hesitated, one foot on the lower step, gaze swinging around the corner of the main building to the outstretched portion of the structure where the living quarters lay. Also dark.

He fought the urge to call out - - "Kaoru, why are the lanterns out?" Because the cold, hard knot of premonition in his gut told him that there was more wrong here than the lanterns gone dark.

He stepped up onto the porch, clothes heavy with water, stood there for a second, listening past the patter of rain for telltale noises. The doors to the dojo were first and center, a mere few steps ahead of him. He put a hand on the wood and gently slid it to the side. All dark and quiet within. The pounding of his blood was louder. The beating of his heart in the fear that the peace he had found had been disturbed. He dropped his head, the water from his bangs dripping onto his face.

One step into the smooth, polished floor of the dojo and something lunged at him out of the dark. A side attack. A flash of metal as a blade stabbed towards him. He sidestepped, caught the arm holding the blade and twisted it hard. There was a popping sound as an elbow was disjointed. A strangled cry. The blade hit the floor even as other shadows moved in on him from the darkness. He made out the shapes of them, dressed in black, with their faces half covered. Well trained, for the most part. Efficient killers, most likely, but not phenomenal ones.

He caught a blade aimed for his neck between two fingers, slammed the heel of his hand against the flat of it and smashed it into the face of its wielder. Blood spurted, but only from the edge of the blade creasing the man's nose. He ducked and rolled to avoid another attack, came up under a man's reach and slammed the heel of his hand into that's man's jaw. That man staggered, not out, but momentarily stunned.

If he stopped to wonder what had become of Kaoru and Kenji, he'd be at a disadvantage. After three years of passivity, it was luck that saved him from being gutted from the one that came at him from the open dojo doors, as much as speed on his part. He slipped on rainwater and lunged sideways to avoid falling, the blade grazed his side as he did, cutting through material to scrape his skin. Kenshin hissed in surprise more than pain and slammed an elbow into the man's wrist. The sword fell and he caught it out of necessity, bringing the hilt up in an arc and smashing it into his attacker's face. The weight of it - - of good solid steel - - in his hand was staggering. How long since he'd held any weapon more dangerous than an ax? How long since he'd given the sakabatou to Yahiko in the vain effort to close the chapter of his life that belonged to the shadow of the Battousai? Long enough to lose his edge?

Maybe. But not against the likes of these. He parried with his stolen sword and the clash of steel made the hairs on the back of his arms stand up. Made his breathing slow down and his eyes narrow in concentration. If Kaoru and Kenji were dead, he'd use this sword to draw life's blood. But until he found out, he was not willing to break his oath and take a life.

With his bare hands, he'd held his own on equal footing with them. With the blade - - with the blade, he swept through them like an ill wind and stood panting afterwards, while they lay groaning or unconscious around him.

Six men. Six assassins in the night. He looked to the seventh who he knew was standing in the shadows at the other end of the dojo.

"Where are my wife and child?"

"My God," said that perfectly accented voice that he had come to know with frightening familiarity. "I'm not easy astounded - - but you, my dear boy, you - - leave me speechless."

"Winter," Kenshin said softly.

"Yes."

"What are you doing?"

"I was trying to tie up loose ends - - but you seem to have unraveled things more than severed them. And I thought you were simply good with gardens and cats. Foolish me, eh?"

"Where are Kaoru and Kenji?"

Winter waved a gloved hand. "Oh, well and truly gone by now."

Kenshin felt his vision narrow. Felt the blood lust well up like a living thing too long restrained. He slid his bare foot forward, preparing for a stance that would take him across the distance to Winter.

"Not dead." Winter stopped him with those two words. "I would never waste so valuable a commodity when I have so great a need for it."

"Where? If you value your life, where?"

Winter stared at the bodies littered about Kenshin's feet. "Those were very talented members of the yakuza. And you were very efficient in dispatching them. Words cannot express how very impressed I am with you."

"Where - -" Kenshin took a step forward. " - - are they?"

"Somewhat single minded, aren't you?" Winter waved a hand, dismissing the query. "What intrigues me, is where you learned such skill - - its certainly nothing of the style your wife teaches - - And why hide it with such vehemence?"

"This is not about me - - where are they?"

"It wasn't. It truly wasn't before these last few moments." Winter smiled at him, that smile that he'd always found uncomfortable before, and now literally set the hairs on the back of his neck at attention.

"But now, I'm intrigued. Now I want to know why a swordsman of such skill hides in this pitiful dojo in the suburbs of Tokyo."

"Take me to Kaoru. She can tell you." Kenshin slid forward, smooth, graceful, circling Winter like Cat would circle a wounded bird.

Winter sighed. "So stubborn. North. They've taken her north, along with the little one. I've a need for her, you see. I had a girl who was supposed to serve a purpose for me, but she had a change of heart and I had to let her go."

The smile came back. "Her and her bodyguards. So very messy. But sometimes messy is nice. It alleviates frustrations. I needed a new girl. One that knew a few words in English. Your wife was so quick to pick it up. The little one will assure that she plays the part I need for her to play."

"The bodies in the canal," Kenshin stated.

"Yes. I'd just finished with them when I was attacked - - of all the ill-luck - - by thieves. They might have ended my plans then and there had I not been fortunate enough to be saved. You have my gratitude there, my boy. Really. I should have guessed it was nothing of luck and everything of skill the way you drove them off. I suppose I was a bit preoccupied."

This man - - this foreigner who he had invited into his and Kaoru's home - - had killed with such ease. Brutally killed and spoke about it as if it were a joke. The depths of his malice were as of yet, still hidden. But Kenshin knew evil when he saw it. He berated himself for not seeing and realizing the snake for what it was, long before this. Perhaps he had seen and refused to acknowledge it, for fear of disrupting the peace. The thought of Kaoru and Kenji in this man's power - - made his palms sweat.

"I do not kill as easily as you - - now," he said softly. "But I shall recover the ability if they are harmed."

"Kill me and you'll never know what has become of them. My men will kill them if I do not give them word to do otherwise. Perhaps they'll have their way with the girl before they do. She's pretty enough to amuse such as them."

Kenshin's lip pulled back in a snarl, he spun and drew the sword faster than thought. It was reflex born out of anger and fear. The sharp side of the blade stopped a hair's breadth from Winter's throat. Winter blinked at him, not quite flinching.

"Bravo. I didn't even see that one coming, and I pride myself on my own alacrity. But all my skill pales in comparison to you."

"What are you?" Kenshin hissed, amazed at the man's calm in the face of death.

"Me? I thought you knew. I'm a merchant, trying to get ahead. A bit down on my luck, but fate is smiling on me now."

"Fate has turned her back on you," Kenshin disagreed.

"No," Winter said, and fearlessly lifted a hand to press the blade away from his neck. "Fate smiles even now. She's given me opportunity. She's given me - - inspiration. Do you know, that I couldn't leave here with intimate knowledge of my presence in anyone's memory? The old doctor and his precious nieces were here all too often for my comfort. My yakuza friends are headed to his dwelling this very night to take care of the problem. They'll make it quick, I'm sure."

"Damn you," Kenshin hissed and stepped back, heart pounding in the beginnings of panic now. If he killed this man, and oh, how his blood cried out for that action despite more than a decade of not taking a life - - then he might never find Kaoru. If what Winter said was true, that Dr. Genzai was in danger, if not already dead, then he had little choice but to try and prevent that tragedy.

"If you hurry," Winter said. "You might be able to stop them."

Kenshin glared, clenching his fist on the sword. There was the sound of rustling cloth and a grunt from behind him. One of the yakuza gained his feet, warily reaching for the weapon Kenshin had knocked from his fingers. A few of the others showed signs of impending consciousness. When he turned his gaze back to Winter, the man had a pistol in his hand. A new style gun with a round chamber that held more than one bullet.

"If I were you," Winter was smiling again. "I would be on my way to see about the good Doctor. I can't imagine how you'd feel if you were only a few moments too late. Those poor girls - - butchered. You can always try to track me and find your wife and son after you're finished. I imagine you've got a talent for that as well."

Kenshin hissed, and spun, decision made. He preyed he wouldn't regret it. He cut through the staggering yakuza without breaking stride, tensed for the gun being cocked. It didn't happen. He was outside in the dark and the rain and no shot came at his back. He slid the sword back into its sheath and darted for the gates, mentally calculating how long it would take to get to Dr. Genzai's house, how long to get the Doctor and the girls out and on their way to a place of safety and how long to get back to the dojo to pick up Winter's trail. Half an hour, if he was fast. A little more depending on what he found at Genzai's dwelling.

Winter put the gun back in his pocket, staring thoughtfully at the reflection in the droplets of water Kenshin had tracked onto the floor. Quite thoroughly surprising, really. It was so infrequently that Winter was taken by surprise anymore that he rather liked the sensation. He rather liked the thrill. But one had to admit, the sword at his throat - - so fast he'd not even seen it drawn - - that had gone a bit beyond thrill and well into fear of his life. In all the time he'd been here at the dojo, he'd seen nothing of the killer in Himura Kenshin's eyes. But tonight - - oh, tonight it had been there. And no casual killer, that, but a cold, deadly professional that would neither hesitate, nor blink an eye over the action. Winter knew that look. He'd seen it on a hundred faces during the various conflicts he'd lived through in the term of his life, both here in Japan and abroad. He'd seen the novices - - the men dragged into war against their will, the ones that killed but did so out of desperation and duty - - and then he'd seen the faces of the ones that were born to it.

Kenshin's eyes had been like that. Winter was lucky, he thought, to be alive. If he'd had drawn the sword under his robe, he might not have been. Wise of him not to. He was good, but he wasn't _that_ good. He was a man well aware of his limitations and well aware of how to use them.

"Why didn't you shoot him?" the yakuza slowly climbed to their feet. They stood there by the doors, a bloody, ill-used group.

"I've changed my mind about him - - his death isn't necessarily what I desire now."

"More the fool you, then," one of them spat. "We'd heard rumors - - but never thought them true."

"What rumors?" Winter asked.

"Of the Battousai. Abandoning the sword and living in Tokyo."

"The Battousai?" that was a familiar name. Winter had been in-country during the revolution. Had helped fund the Imperialist's, helped supply them with weapons and information. He knew the names of the premier killers of that bloody time.

"Himura - - the Battousai." He laughed. "Oh, good God and I've been living under his roof. How ironic."

They stared at him as if he were mad as he stood there chortling. Oh, but it was ironic. More than any of them could know. A few years past, he'd bet his family fortune on a venture with a visionary. A man who'd also been a premier assassin for the Meiji. He'd traded all the gold he could beg, borrow and steal to invest in the construction of a ship in return for unique and sole trading rights with the Japan that Shishio Makoto would have made.

If not for the intervention of the legendary manslayer - - Himura the Battousai. He'd lost a quarter of a million pounds when that ship had sunk. Lost more when Shishio Makoto had died. He'd lost his backing, his credibility and his foothold in the structure of power back home that desperately wanted the majority of the Japanese trade. He'd never expected the nefarious Battousai to look so - - young.

"What do we do now?" the yakuza wanted to know.

"We ride north out of the city. Visibly north. I want him to follow that path. Send word to your contacts in the mountains - - let them know what to expect. Send word to the ship that I'll meet it at Sendai instead of sailing out from Edo bay."

The Yakuza nodded and two of them pelted into the rain. The rest waited for him to gather his thoughts and abandon this place. It had served its purpose and more. It had given him new purpose.

Through the rain slick streets of Tokyo with a stolen sword through his sash and he'd promised himself that he'd not take the sword to hand again. Not the killing ones, at any rate. The reverse blade he'd have happily wielded, but that he'd given to Yahiko - - yet one more way to sever those pesky ties to the past. He regretted it now. He wanted that familiar weight at his side, and that familiar balance in his hand. He wanted not to have to concentrate to remember not to use the sharp side of the blade - - though he'd come so close with Winter. He never would have taken it up, if not for the fear over Kaoru and Kenji. Would have dealt with the assassin's another way. He ought to throw it down now, save that he was afraid of what he'd find at Dr. Genzai's. Save that he was afraid he'd been dormant too long and nothing _short_ of a sword might give him the upper hand.

Strange. Fear was not a casual concept with him. Fear was a stranger. Real fear, the kind that made him question his judgment, the kind that made his hands shake, the kind that made that tight knot of uncertainty ball up in his gut. It took a wife and a child to bring it out in him.

He pushed it back, because he couldn't afford its interference. He couldn't afford shaking hands or hesitation. Not when he was this out of practice. More the fool him.

There. Up the narrow little street, crowded with both residences and a few businesses, all of them shuttered against the rain and the cool air it brought with it. The doctor and his nieces lived in the back of his clinic. The clinic itself sat nestled between a larger dwelling and the shop of a seamstress. There was a gate to a narrow alley leading to the small garden behind the clinic. Kenshin took that path, rather than the more obvious one of the front door. Around the back and the garden was undisturbed. The back porch unlittered and the sliding doors unmolested. The house seemed quiet enough, but he felt no false hope. Competent assassins would leave no trace of their passage - - not unless they wished to.

For a moment, Kenshin stood, his back to the wood beside the sliding doors, listening for sounds other than the constant patter of rain. He heard what sounded like a child's sigh inside. The rustle of a small body turning in sleep. He let out his own breath in relief. Not too late then.

There was a sound from the roof and he froze. A shuffling heavier than rain rolling off the tiles. Kenshin backed silently into the deepest shadows at the corner of the porch. A dark clad body dropped down from above, hitting the soggy earth with a splat that could not be avoided. Another followed it. There was the muffled sound of splintering wood from inside the dwelling and Kenshin hissed softly, urged into action by the fact that there were more than these two. That others were already invading this house.

They had long knives in their hands, and probably other weapons on their persons. He flowed out of the shadow like a vengeful curse - - drawing both sword and sheath from his belt, slamming the hard, metal tipped end of the sheath square into the face of the nearest assassin. Bone shattered under the blow. The man let out a muffled, strangled moan and collapsed. The other one was professional enough not to be distracted by the surprise of his comrade's fall and came at Kenshin skillfully with the knife.

Not skillfully enough. Kenshin sidestepped and brought the hilt of the sword up under the man's jaw, spun and cracked the still sheathed weapon up against the side of the yakuza assassin's head. Which ended that conflict quickly enough. He ran for the house then, even as a startled, shrill cry sounded from within. Didn't bother with struggling with the sliding doors but hurled himself through the thin wood and came to a rolling stance with the sword out and gleaming in the near pitch darkness. Two more shapes, with similarly gleaming blades. Four assassins for one old man and two young girls. Ridiculous and shameful. Someone had too much time on their hands.

He saw a set of small shapes squirming back against the wall their sleeping mats were set against. A larger, groggy one at the other side of the room. An assassin stood over each mat, weapon raised, hesitating only because of his entrance. Perhaps they'd been expecting their comrades. In the moment it took them to realize that he was no friend of theirs, he'd swung the sheath and taken out the first one. Spun even as that blow landed, parrying with the sword, slipping through the man's guard like it was mist. He might just as easily have taken the man's head off, as slam the dull side of the blade into his neck hard enough to smash his face into the wall over the frightened girls.

He turned to the one threatening the doctor then, and that one had a touch more skill than the others. That one dodged his first attack and lunged at him with the long knife. He parried it aside with enough force to knock it from the man's hand and stepped in unexpectedly and fast to press the business edge of the blade against the man's throat. Shocked black eyes blinked down at him.

"Get the girls and get out. Through the back. Wait for me at the gate," he told Genzai and heard the old man grunt as he pushed himself up off the floor.

The girls whimpered, searching in the dark for their sandals and night robes. Kenshin waited until they'd stepped outside into the rain before he whispered up at the last standing assassin.

"You're not very good at your trade. Perhaps you should find another. Take a message to whatever men command you - - they've chosen the wrong people to attack this night. That whatever understanding they have with the Englishman, they would do well to rethink it where it concerns the Kamiya Dojo and the friends of the Kamiya Dojo. They will receive a visit - - each and everyone of them - - should they not, from someone who _is_ very good at this trade you play at."

"Who - -?" the man gasped, his breath short against the threat of sharp steel.

Kenshin stepped back, grim-eyed and angry. "Listen to the rumors. Battousai the manslayer is not dead."

He flipped the blade and used his palm against the flat side to smash it against the forehead of the yakuza. The man went down with a whistling of breath, eyes rolled up in his sockets.

Dr. Genzai and the girls were waiting at the gate for him, shivering and soaked in their night robes. Terrified. He had no patience in him to comfort them. His mind was too far afield, wondering how much of a head start Winter had on him. Wondering where Kaoru and Kenji were. He moved through the alley and they followed him, silently. Suzume clung to her older sister.

Out into the street and Kenshin paused, looking for other yakuza. He sensed nothing of malice. Sensed no spying eyes. So he moved on.

"Do you have a place to stay tonight? Someone you're not close to? A place no one would think to look for you? A patient perhaps?"

The old man nodded. "Yes. Who were they? What did they want of us?"

"Yakuza. They wanted your silence. Tomorrow, take the girls and leave Tokyo. Go and stay with Miss Megumi. Do not go home for clothing or money. Tell no one where you go. Do not come back here until I let you know it is safe."

"But how do we - -"

"Here." He dug in his gi for what money he had on him. Some of it was Winter's. Fitting, he supposed. _He_ didn't want it.

He wanted to leave them and chase after his own family, but their fear and his own sense of responsibility wouldn't let him abandon them until they reached the house of Dr. Genzai's patient. Kenshin faded into the shadows then, waiting only long enough to see the door open and the old man and his young nieces step inside into welcome warmth.

Then he ran back to his own dwelling. To open gates and a muddy yard where water stood in pools on ground too hard from drought to properly soak it up.

Empty. They had taken all the life out of it. The dojo doors stood open, and rain had darkened the floor two body lengths inside. He stood at that portal for a moment, then carefully slid the doors shut and moved down the porch to the sleeping chambers. There was no sign of disturbance. She had not put up a fight. Perhaps she had not been able to. Perhaps she'd been under threat of sword or gun - - or perhaps they'd held Kenji's life over her head. Winter had said he'd do that. Winter had said he wouldn't hurt them. Winter had said he'd needed them and in that one thing - - Kenshin believed him. The man would not have done this otherwise.

Winter had said north. Whether that was true or not remained to be seen.

Chapter Four

It took a bit of asking, but eventually, Kenshin found a man who'd seen a group of riders leaving the city by a northern road. Yes, one of them might very well have been a foreigner. And yes, there might have been a woman and child in the group.

The rain had let up by the time he walked out of Tokyo, but it had played its part well enough, obscuring all evidence of tracks on the road. But this particular road lead not along the northern coast, but cut through the mountains to eventually meet the coastal road again on the other side. It was a harsher path, but there were less villages and towns along the route. Less witnesses. On horseback, they had a massive advantage over him, but there would be forges and passes in the mountains that a man on foot might be better able to traverse. And horses had to be stopped and rested and fed on a more regular basis than a man might have to. And he hadn't been absent from the road so long that he'd forgotten how to walk with both the sun and the moon as guides if need be. He would find them.

He left the sword at the dojo, not comfortable with its presence. With the feeling of the blood soaked into the blade. A sword made for killing that had indeed killed many times before. He'd vowed not to take up such a blade again - - and out of desperation he had done so. He'd taken no life with it, though he'd been sorely tempted. That easy and his convictions were swayed. He was appalled at himself, now he had the time to dwell on it. Wavering on the edge of taking Winter's life and then spewing forth threats in the name of the Battousai.

They left something for him on the cross roads ten miles out of Tokyo. A ribbon caught in a twisted shrub at the side of the road. It was wet and torn and filthy, but it held Kaoru's scent. He clenched his fist about it, cursing Winter for playing with him, for certainly it had been Winter's notion to leave it. A crumb for him to follow.

A day of walking past well planted fields with yellowed crops. The rain might well have saved this year's harvest. From the look of things, all was not yet lost. The road was muddy and Kenshin's sandals thick with it as he walked. There was no grace to trudging through such muck. No silence in it, as sandals plopped in and out of wet, clinging earth. The rain kept his clothes sodden and heavy, and his hair clung to his face and neck with irritating stubbornness. It was long enough to tie back at the base of his neck - - and as good a use for Kaoru's ribbon as any, though he wound it enough times around that the dangling ends were negligible. He looked girlish enough without obvious ribbons in his hair. It felt odd, though, having it tied back again, yet without the heaviness of locks that fell to the small of his back. It would grow a handspan in a month though, unless he cut it again - - but he'd wait for Kaoru to trim it if she wished. Fates willing, it would not be so long a time that it reached halfway down his back.

He slipped into an easy, distance covering jog as afternoon fell and the rain stopped. It was easier to run without the hindrance of a dripping hakama. Wiser to do so past the extensive fields and under the cover of the road as it ran through sun dappled woods. The path was more solid on the higher ground of the forest as well and less populated by farmers or merchants and travelers who might question why an honest man needed to take this road at more than a pleasant walk. Or what he might be running from.

There was a small collection of huts at the side of the road. A traveler's waystop that boasted food and board for the night. Kenshin declined both, only stopping long enough to inquire about other travelers that might have passed this way in the day.

A few travelers, yes. No horsemen had stopped, but at least one group of them had passed silently by the waystation, a dull-eyed child reported. Kenshin thanked him solemnly and bowed to the aged grandfather who stood in the doorway.

Into the night again, under a sky devoid of stars and only minimally graced by cloud filtered moonlight. The trees made it darker. Kenshin was not afraid of the dark, nor what lay hidden within it. He hunted the worst of those things.

By dawn, he had to rest. It was the second one he'd seen without sleep and his body gave him no other choice. He found a jutting rock to provide some shelter should the rain begin again, and unfolded the blanket from the small pack he'd made for himself at the Kamiya dojo. He folded himself within it and sat with his back in the corner of the crevice, shutting his eyes and almost immediately falling into a light slumber.

He woke of his own accord no more than a few hours later. Dawn had turned into early morning and the sun was still overshadowed by clouds. The rains had come finally and looked to stay for a while. He devoured a strip of dried fish and the last of the rice balls they'd had for lunch the day Winter had revealed his deception. The road began to climb upwards, towards forest covered foothills. The mountains, an ever present feature on the misty horizon beyond Tokyo, now loomed huge and ponderous. This inland road he followed did not traverse the worst of the heights, but it was still a strenuous trail to walk. Most merchants took the coastal road, even those coming from inland Utsunomiya where this road eventually lead. He'd walked this road before, though, and others like it through these mountains and others, during his years as a rurouni. They were seasonally dangerous and usually strife with bandits who used the thick forest as cover for their activities. The latter he had little concern for. The former he would take some care for, considering the heavy rain of the last two days.

It was well into afternoon before the road began to steeply climb, leaving the foothills and zig zagging up the base of what could be considered the first true mountainous obstacle. The forest was heavy and rich with the smell of cedar and conifers. Though the occasional banyan, camphor and mulberry trees dotted the thick foliage. Small birds chattered, darted about under the canopy of limbs and leaves, hardly taking note of him at all as he silently trespassed through their playground.

He saw in the protected earth of the high trail, the deep scuff made by a horse's hoof. A most recent mark. A strand of hair from a horse's tail tangled in a profusion of creeping vines further on.

There was a Shinto shrine somewhere up this road, on a branch leading west, and perhaps a half a day beyond that, an old Buddhist monastery fallen to ruin after the Meiji restoration. A farming village in the next deep valley beyond this first upthrust series of peaks, and then beyond that more mountainous paths to travel. Japan was more mountain than anything else, the great centers of civilization finding what footholds they could in the plains and on the coasts or within the broad vales between ranges. Tokyo itself was nestled between great ranges on both the northern and the eastern sides of her.

A well-traveled man was used to climbing steep trails. Only now, Kenshin felt it a little bit in his legs, after so long living in the city doing nothing more strenuous than keeping the Kamiya dojo in good repair. He passed a man and woman walking down the road from the north and asked if they'd seen riders. No, they had come from the shrine and seen no one either there or on the road not on foot. He came to the stone marker that sat at the side of the road, indicating the smaller trail that led up to the shrine. He had no need to visit it and doubted that Winter and his Yazuka would pause to seek favor from the gods. Kenshin passed it by, continuing north up the road. Darkness came and with it more rain. He was forced to shelter by the sudden ferocity of it, and huddled under a great cedar while the worst of it played out. He dozed a little, arms on knees, forehead resting on forearms, taking advantage of his enforced rest. He came fully awake finally, as it let off, stomach complaining and throat dry. He ate the last of his dried fish and drank rainwater running off a rounded boulder.

The night was inky, the clouds so thick not even a whisper of moonlight escaped past them. It made travel an unpredictable venture at best. But, Kenshin's night vision was sharp and his footing certain and he felt sure that horsemen would not feel so confident moving along these trails on such a night. So he pushed on.

It was dawn when he heard the squeal of a woman from the forest upslope. Automatically his hand grasped for a sword hilt that was not there. He closed his fist on an indrawn breath and darted into the forest on the eastern side of the trail.

The wood was dense, not even the trace of a game trail. It was steep enough that his sandals slid here and there on slippery mulch. There was another gasping protest, almost lost to him by the minuscule sound of his own progress. It wasn't, he thought, Kaoru's voice. He'd known that instinctively at the first utterance. The second one assured him of the fact. It did not stop him from seeking her out, though.

There was a clearing in the woods, though not much of one. The overgrown ruins of what once might have been a shrine now crumbled and gone to root. There were a group of ragged men in the midst of fallen stone and broken statues. Six of them in a circle about another who's bare backside pumped over a pair of skinny brown legs. The woman had stopped her cries, but her limbs still moved in protest. The smell of blood was brittle in the air. Not only were they raping her, but they'd cut her first.

Kenshin's lip pulled back in a snarl of outrage, his fingers closing over an arm length stick jaggedly broken off at the end. He swept into the clearing with no sound of warning, slammed the wrist thick stick one way and clubbed a man in the ear, and then before the first had registered the pain of the blow, slammed it to the other direction and felled a second. The men fell almost simultaneously and the others slowly blinked in recognition of their entertainment disrupted. With his way clear he latched onto the rutting man's collar and yanked him bodily backwards, hurling him behind him to fall ungracefully in the leaf covered grown. The woman pulled her skinny limbs close to her body, shivering. No young girl this, but a woman of perhaps forty, by the lines of her face and the sagging of her body. They'd cut her across the nipple, and lower belly, and been none to kind with the use of their fists on her face and body. The men paid her nakedness little heed though, focused surely and entirely upon Kenshin.

"Do you think," he said, quiet and angry. "That the odds were well enough in your favor, seven of you against her one?"

"You little bastard," the one he'd pulled from the woman was trying to get his pants up about his hips. "I'll kill you - -"

"Please - - try." He was in no mood for gentleness. He swung the limb behind him in a sharp arc, catching the closest man square in the face with it, hearing the shattering of bone that indicated broken nose. He brought it around, ducking low as another one leapt at him, waited for that big body to reach the apex of its lunge then jammed the stick up and into a soft belly.

The woman, he noticed, from the corner of his vision had scrambled up, gathered a few shards of ripped clothing and was running with a limping gait for the cover of the woods. He took the next two out with blows to the head and sternum respectively and saved the last, most devastating blow for the rapist, by bringing the stick up with great force, between his legs. The wood splintered, the man let out a choking gasp and fell, curled fetally around his private parts.

He dropped the part remaining in his hand and stepped over a body, scanning the woods for sign of the woman.

"Hello? Are you still here? They'll hurt you no more, that I promise."

If she were still lurking about, she made no answer. She'd looked like a peasant woman, from the signs of hard labor about her and he supposed she lived in these mountains, or else had been traveling through them in the company of her family. Few women traveled alone through these roads. These men were most assuredly mountain bandits. The last two had pulled knives, which lay near their still forms. He absently kicked the blades away, not certain what to do now that the victim had fled and the culprits lay moaning at his feet. Perhaps he ought to go after her, to see if she were capable of finding her way either home or back to her group. The notion of wasting time spent chasing down Kaoru and Kenji made his gut twitch a little in panic.

He_ needed_ to be on his way. But still, he couldn't let a wounded, just raped woman wander the woods alone, with bandits that he had not properly killed still on the loose. They'd not share the mercy he'd shown them with her, if they found her again.

He moved into the woods, decision made. Smelling the faint trace of blood. There was a speck on it on a leaf a few yards to his left. He started that way, carefully tracing her path. There was a small trail some fifty yards from the ruins of the shrine. It led up the mountain to the east. It was clear enough of forest debris that it must be well used. He saw very fresh bare foot prints in the moist earth. She'd fled this way. Had known the trail was here, so therefore, must live in the mountains. A ways up and there was a small wooden shed at the side of the road and beyond that an abandoned garden plot, overgrown by the forest. The shed was empty, the home to swallows and vines now. But there were narrow ruts in the trail now that denoted the passage of a small cart, and a few small stones carved with haiku. So people lived up here and the woman was no doubt on her way to home and help. He could probably turn about and go back to the main road and his own concerns.

He chewed his lip, convincing himself of this. A man appeared on the trail ahead and stopped, blinking down at him in surprise.

"Have you seen a dog?" the man asked.

"No. I'm following a woman. She only just came up this trail. She was hurt."

The man frowned. "No woman. Who was she?"

He had no answer to that. The forest had gone deathly silent and he couldn't recall if it had been that way before he'd started up this trail or only in the last few moments. Foolish of him, he was usually more aware of the details. The man was staring at him, waiting for an answer perhaps. Or - - perhaps not.

His senses cried out in warning even as the dagger sailed through the air by his head. He smacked it aside with the back of his hand, whirling and not so much seeking out the thrower as the next source of movement in the surrounding woods. There, a man in the shadow of the trees that stood and hurled first one knife then a second in quick succession.

Kenshin simply stepped aside and let the first one fly past. He caught the second between his thumb and forefinger, flipped it in the air and sent it flying back to its owner. He didn't aim to kill. Just to incapacitate. The knife buried itself in the man's leg above the knee and with a howl, that one went down, clutching the wound.

With a cry, two more came out of the woods at him, one with a pair of sais and the other with a well used sword. He ran, weaponless at the former, who had shorter reach, and launched himself into the air just outside it; turned himself mid-air and came down lightly behind the man, then kicked him forward into the path of the swordsman. Weapons tangled inadvertently and flesh might have been pierced.

These were not of the same breed as the men in the clearing. These were not simple mountain bandits out to prey on the weak and helpless. These men had weapons of some quality and knew the use of them. The swordsman was efficient enough to avoid the embrace of his comrade and rush forward to stalk Kenshin. A quick lunge. A swipe. An unexpected arc of steel that proved this man knew technique, instead of simple butchery. Kenshin danced out of the way, wary of the blade, keeping an eye out for the other.

"You seem to have me at a disadvantage," he said, as the sai wielder joined the swordsman in stalking him. "I'm without weapon and you have three. Little fairness in that."

"Run then," the swordsman suggested with a grin and feinted towards him. Kenshin leapt back. He glanced sidelong towards the wood, wondering why they wanted him on the run. Wondering what awaited him in the woods.

"Are you his?" he asked softly. "The Englishman's?"

"Surrender and maybe we'll tell you."

Kenshin tilted his head. "Before or after I'm dead?"

They laughed, appreciating his humor.

"All right. I'll run, then." He made for the woods and they obligingly moved to follow him. A half dozen strides in and he found the launching point he needed to take him into the trees. He pulled himself up into the branches like a wraith and heard them curse behind him, oblivious to the path he had chosen.

They were not ninja, only yakuza and did not know the ways of a true hitokiri. He let them pass him by, then came down, hard and fast, his feet planted between the swordsman's shoulder blades. That one went down, face first upon the forest floor. Kenshin caught the sword before it was flung away - - held it gingerly a moment - - convincing himself to tighten his grip around the well worn hilt. It was more a trial for him now, to hold this killing blade and contemplate the use of it, than it had been days ago when the shock of Winter's evil was still fresh upon him. Even holding it - - he was that much closer to drawing blood and once he'd started - - it would be no easy thing to stop.

He straightened with a silent exhalation of breath, the sword still in his hand, searching the woods for the sai wielder. The man had melted into the forest. But the sound of his passage still reached Kenshin's ears. He set off, considerably quieter, in search of his prey, alert to whatever else was waiting for him in this wood. They had not urged him here without reason.

His prey thought it was clever. The man lay in wait for him, crouched within the shelter of a thick cedar. Kenshin let him spring out, parried the first jab easily, avoided the next with a sliding movement of his body. He got through the man's shabby guard in an instant - - had the point of the sword pressed against the pulse of the man's throat at arm's length and stood there, waiting for the idiot to realize that short of lunging forward and impaling himself, he could not reach Kenshin with the shorter sai swords.

"Where - - are - - they?" he asked with perfectly calm clarity, once the sai's had dropped helplessly at the man's sides.

"Here."

That word was actually uttered after the initial echo of the gunshot registered in Kenshin's hearing. He heard the word and recognized the voice a moment before the pain registered in his thigh. He looked down, in dull shock at the growing spot of red high up on the leg of his hakama. The man in front of him cried out, clutching at his hip and falling, blood escaping past his fingers from the bullet that had passed through Kenshin and into him.

He turned, and found Winter a dozen paces away, holding the gun casually at his side. There were a handful of men around him. The man was smiling. Quite cheerfully smiling.

"And here you are again. Bravo. The rumors do not lie, do they? But are you are everything they say you are?"

"Where are they?" Kenshin repeated the question, taking a step towards Winter. The pain in his leg was not so bad that he couldn't put weight on it. It was just a matter of focusing past it and on more important issues. Winter said nothing. He stepped back and one of his yakuza moved forward throwing a succession of knives. It was to entertain Winter, Kenshin thought, batting them aside effortlessly, moving forward step by step as he did.

Winter's smile widened and another pair of men rushed forward with swords.

Clash. Parry. Swipe. Impact. Impact.

Two men down in five strokes. He'd had to be careful with the killing blade he held. With the sakabatou he might have done it in two. One if he were particularly on his game.

Winter laughed outright. Kenshin felt his vision waver a little. Felt the warm wetness flowing down his leg.

"You find this - - amusing?" Another step and it put him almost within striking distance. Winter would never see him coming. Those behind him wouldn't be able to stop it.

"You can't imagine," Winter said. "The irony is, I'd been cursing your name long before I had a face to put with it."

"Where is she?"

Winter sighed. "Your single-mindedness is beginning to become annoying. Put the sword down and perhaps I'll tell you."

Kenshin stared, narrow eyed and fed up. He focused his anger - - his determination into that stare, and the men behind Winter quailed, backing up. Winter met it with complacent curiosity - - not effected at all.

"My dear, dear boy, I've clashed wits and wills against the lords of parliament and that, believe me is a brutal lot, don't try to intimidate me with that nasty glare. Put the sword down." Winter's smile faded. "Or shall I have the child's throat slit? I don't need him, after all. It will be harder to control her without him - - but I'm sure I shall prevail."

The Englishman raised his fingers, poised to snap off a signal. Kenshin took a breath and let the sword tip fall to the ground, his fingers still loosely around the hilt, not willing to take the chance that Winter was bluffing. "No."

"Ah," Winter's smile returned. "That's my boy. Now let it fall."

Kenshin opened his fingers and the sword hit the earth with a muffled thump. Winter gestured and one of the knife throwers darted forward and snatched it up, retreating rapidly after he'd done so.

"Oh, don't be so skittish, he won't endanger the child's life with misbehavior," Winter assured his men.

They moved in then, as Winter strolled up, two of them taking his arms and holding fast as the Englishman stopped before him. The man's hand snaked out, catching Kenshin's jaw, tilting his face up and to the side as the man's thumb grazed over the cross-shaped scar on his cheek.

"Where are they?" Kenshin hissed, face still in Winter's grip.

"Oh, on ship on its way to meet me at Sendai. This whole little land trip was for you and I must say, you made very good time."

Kenshin blinked, putting together the pieces that had made him believe in the lie. He just didn't understand why the effort had been made.

He said something soft and blasphemous under his breath and tensed - - - Winter pressed the muzzle of the gun to his shoulder and calmly pulled the trigger - - -

_Thud - - -_

The world danced on the edge a great swirling void of red, twisting slowly, irrevocably into deepest black. That he was aware of this - - was a change for the better. There'd been nothing but void before. The cognizance signaled something different.

_Thud - - -_

That something different brought with it a world filled to overflowing with pain. Perhaps _better,_ had been too hasty a summation for the return of awareness.

_Thud - - -_

Kenshin heard the sound of his own scream before he fully realized he was doing it. It burned in his throat, but not nearly so hot as the pain in his hand as they drove the stake through it, pinning his arm like a butterfly wing to a board. The wash of agony and disorientation drove him to twist and writhe in the arms that held him up, but the arm with the glowing ember of pain at the end of it was the good one and the other hung limp and useless from the bullet Winter had put through his shoulder.

He had no real notion of where he was, or how many of them held onto him, only that he needed away from the hurt and that it seared deeper with each frantic movement he made. But he couldn't escape them, not with strong arms about his legs and torso, and others drawing up his numb arm and placing his hand flat against a rough surface.

A man lumbered up, face skewered and wavering in Kenshin's vision; lifted a wooden spike and a mallet and with a great grin on his face, drove the point of it through Kenshin's palm.

He screamed again, tasting blood in the back of his throat. They let him go then and he hung there, toes barely touching the ground, hair an obscuring veil about his face. It hid the blood where he'd bitten through his tongue. It hid the involuntary tears that slid down his cheeks.

It occurred to him that he was dead. That he'd probably die slow and painfully, and that in and of itself was not so great a horror as the notion that there would be no one to save Kaoru and Kenji.

No one knew. Dr. Genzai didn't know what had happened - - not really, so he couldn't tell Yahiko when he came home and found the dojo abandoned. He couldn't tell Misao if she came looking, or Aoshi if he came on her heels.

A hand tangled in his hair and pulled his head back. He hadn't the strength to fight it. Winter sneered at him face close enough that Kenshin could feel the heat of his breath.

"We've rather clipped your wings - - haven't we?" Winter's sneer turned into something else.

He pressed his mouth next to Kenshin's and ran his tongue over the blood leaking from his lips. Winter whispered with his bloody mouth pressed close to Kenshin's own. "And I so did want to fuck you before you died - - maybe I still will, eh?"

Kenshin brought his knee up. Hard. Hoped he drove the man's genitals up into his guts with enough force to make him bleed internally - - but Winter, after a few minutes of gasping cries, managed to shake off the hands that tried to help him and stab a shaking hand towards Kenshin.

"Bind his feet. Bind the bloody bastard's feet."

They came at him then. Winter's men and others dressed in the rough garb of mountain bandits. He had no defense save his legs, and soon enough they took that away from him, battering him with crude staffs until his head was swirling and his body aching with points of pain that had nothing to do with his tortured hands.

He went under soon after, the blood leaking down his arms, and from his shoulder, mingling with the other blood they'd caused to flow. It pooled at his feet, soaking the dirt. His vision dimmed on that sight and he doubted seriously that it would ever come back.

Winter got to his feet, the pain in his groin quite vividly fresh. He had to take a moment for the spots to leave his vision. Had to take a moment to gather the will to move and endure the lingering pain caused by Kenshin's well placed knee.

Kenshin hung there now, limp, in the small clearing beyond the rustic shelters the mountain bandit's called home, red hair loose and obscuring his face, the pale cloth of his hakama soaked with crimson. The fight was out of him now, but Winter didn't believe for a moment they'd broken him. There had been nothing in those narrow, black-rimmed eyes to suggest he was even close, even as they'd beaten him to insensibility. Breaking him would take some while - - longer, Winter thought regretfully, than either of them had.

He could tarry for a little while, but he had a ship waiting for him in Sendai. And Kenshin - - despite all the determination in the world - - he'd bleed out soon enough - - if the shock didn't finish him first. Or die from the tender ministrations of the mountain bandits within whose territory they all dallied.

They owed a certain, loose allegiance with the more organized yakuza, those bandits. They were none too comfortable in Winter's foreign presence, having had little or no contact with westerners despite the more civilized portions of the country embracing the west and the wonders it brought with it.

They had a score to settle with Kenshin, so they said. He'd shamed them on his way up the mountain - - hurt them bad enough without even the benefit of a sword to have them crying for his blood. Well, they had it now, it was only a matter of how long he lasted before he ran dry of it.

Which was a shame, because it meant that Winter would have little privacy to enjoy his own brand of - - - entertainment. He thought himself rather more refined than the bandits. His little games could last for days - - weeks even, if he were patient enough to draw it out. He generally had the sense not to inflict critical injury on a victim at the very first. But, one had to assume that the crude scaffold of wood that they'd nailed Kenshin to, had seen similar atrocities, what with the stains of old blood and the pits in the supporting timbers.

Someone gave Winter strong, recently brewed beer and he grimaced, having more a taste for sake. But he sipped at it, watching them torment their prey.

Kenshin had done very well, up until the moment that panic over the girl and child had driven him to rashness. If he'd practiced more patience, he might have hunted the lot of them down, one by one, until he'd deprived Winter of his allies - - Winter might have even told him what he wanted to hear on threat of his life - - with no easy out in sight. Any real hitokiri would have taken such a path - - but then again, if all of what Winter suspected was true, then Kenshin hadn't been a hitokiri for many years. Had rather stubbornly turned his back on such a life and all the ruthless mindset that came with it. A man with a wife and a child had different priorities, after all.

"Do you know," Winter said, when the bandits had tired of their play and moved away to give him the opportunity to circle Kenshin in relative privacy. "That you cost me my fortune and a good deal of my reputation? Did you know that?"

Kenshin didn't look at him. Didn't open those intriguing violet eyes of his to even acknowledge Winter's existence. Winter knew he was conscious. Could tell by the inadvertent twitching of skin, when Winter trailed his fingertips across blood streaked ribs. A lean, compact body to have caused such damage. With such an ominous reputation, one might have imagined the Battousai to be a towering, hulk of a man.

"I had a bargain with a man that would have given me and mine unique trading rights with Japan - - that would have put the damned pushy Americans in their place - - but you killed that man and sank the ship I'd invested my fortune in to gain his allegiance. I cursed your name for a solid month after that fiasco. Well, not your proper name - - but the appellation of Battousai the manslayer. For that alone - - I wished you a thousand sorts of death. I'd pictured all manner of man in those visions - - but never once imagined you to be quite so - - young-seeming. And pretty. Not dangerous looking at all, until you get that look in your eyes."

Winter pressed his thumb experimentally into the seeping bullet wound on Kenshin's right shoulder. Fresh blood oozed out, mingling with dirt and dried streaks of red. Kenshin hissed through his teeth, body jerking a little in a reflex action he couldn't stop. His eyes slit open a little, one swelling somewhat from the impact of someone's fist to the side of his head. He said nothing, though. The only thing he wanted of Winter was the girl and her child.

"If she serves her purpose, I won't hurt her." Winter wiped the blood from his hand off on Kenshin's hakama. "I receive no joy from killing women and children - - I only do it from necessity. One little girl and her brat can do me no harm once I've gotten what I need. I rather like her, to be honest. She has spunk. More so that your average Japanese wife. I admire that. I even have a few friends, who might enjoy a little Asian mistress - - might even tolerate the child, if the girl were to excel at her duties - -"

The breath hissed between Kenshin's teeth and his eyes snapped open, flashing in anger. Winter laughed softly.

"I've no interest in her myself, of course. My appetites run towards - - different things." He ran a thumb down the line of Kenshin's unscarred cheek and sighed in regret over lost opportunity. "As much as I hate to leave you, my boy - - I've a ship to meet and little time to waste. Perhaps we'll met in hell and you can extract your pound of vengeance. But until that time - - - I would tell you to die well, but with this bunch - - I've the feeling that will be a distinct impossibility."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Five

In the fall of 1880 Sagara Sanosuke had taken a slow boat to China, via Korea and meandered his way up through Manchuria and eventually into the Mongolian highlands. He hadn't particularly had a destination in mind, it was simply a matter of going wherever his feet happened to lead. He'd gotten honest work a few times as a caravan guard and those efforts had put coin in his pocket and put him on paths that he might otherwise have blindly stumbled past. Sagara Sanosuke's sense of direction had a tendency to fail him on alarmingly regular basis, so following in the footsteps of age-old trading routes led him to interesting and exciting places. It introduced him to strange customs and stranger people and gave him the chance to taste new and exotic foods.

Chinese, Mongolian, Korean - - even the exotic Indo-Chinese cooking of the far south - - none of them really compared to a good old Japanese beef pot. Sometimes Sano missed the familiar flavor of Japanese cooking more than he missed the familiar faces.

Sometimes.

Sometimes he didn't think about home at all, so swept up in foreign culture and adventure had he become. He'd met a man in Nanchang who'd taught him the rudiments of a particularly devastating Chinese martial art. He'd pestered the master for days until the unassuming, quiet and generally patient man had given in to frustration and attempted to cease Sano's badgering the only way he thought Sano would truly appreciate - - by soundly kicking his ass.

Of course, it took a lot of ass kicking to beat Sagara Sanosuke down and his durability had impressed the man. Sano had learned a great deal about the finer techniques of fighting that he'd never even imagined existed during his years as a brawler and a street fighter. In the six months that he studied under Chan he came to the realization that he'd been little more than a bumbling clown. Sure he'd had a few good moves - - no one in their right mind could discount the Futae no Kiwami, but compared to Chan, or that bastard Saitou - - or Kenshin - - it was a wonder they didn't laugh and poke fun at him behind his back

Damned embarrassing to contemplate. It made him flush hot every time he thought about it. Made him wish he could take back some of the things he'd said. Some of the things he'd done.

But he'd come a long way. His hand had healed so that he only felt the pangs of old injuries on particularly rainy days. He figured the ghost of those breaks would always be with him. A reminder of stupidity. Good sense had never been a strong point with him - - he could just admit the fault a bit more easily after walking over a good portion of central Asia. Kenshin had had something - - with the whole wonderer thing. It gave a body time to think - - time to learn things about the state of one's _soul _\- - yeah, that was a good enough word - - time to make sense of the drama of one's past life and make decisions about the direction of the future. And there was the food and the fights and the hair-raising escapes from situations even a fearless man might have second thoughts about stepping into.

Truth to tell, Sano thought about those latter things a great deal more strenuously than he thought about the sate of his soul - - but sometimes even he could bask in introspection.

He'd had lost track of Chan in Hong Kong in the mid-part of 1883. They'd just sort of agreed to separate ways and it had been no great blow. Chan never had enjoyed gambling or brawling and he'd look down his stubby nose at Sano each and every time he'd come back smelling of beer and blood. And in the six months they'd journeyed together, Sano had learned most of what he wanted to know. He was a fast learner. He was, for the most part, an impatient one.

It was in the bustling port city of Hong Kong that he started to get homesick. Well, not so much for the little shack he'd had in Tokyo - - as for Japan in general and familiar faces in particular. He'd never had a lot of close friends, growing up in the early years of the Meiji rule. Oh, he had drinking buddies and gambling cronies, all of who'd have abandoned him like a hot rock at the first sign of real trouble - - but no real friends. He'd spent a lot of years with a king-sized chip on his shoulder - - angry at the world - - angry at the Imperialist's who'd betrayed the only people he _had _called friends. Making new ones seemed to be just asking for trouble. Friends either betrayed you or they died and a body would just as well avoid the pain of either. So he gambled and he fought for a living and he'd made due well enough in his solitary life.

He didn't realize how lonesome an existence that was until Kenshin came along and kicked his ass. Kicked his ass and saved it in a way, all in the one act. Damned slippery rurouni with his ass-backward sword and his sweet smile and his quiet, sensible words. And Sano had been hooked. Drawn like a moth to flame - - and not quite knowing why or how. Only knowing that the damned red-haired swordsman, whose head barely reached his nose had earned his earnest respect. And Sagara Sanosuke hadn't respected anybody in a very, very long time.

So whether Kenshin had been looking for a friend or not - - well he got Sano. And Sano got all the baggage that Kenshin had managed to attract to himself during his time in Tokyo. Meaning Kaoru and her horrible cooking and her rundown dojo and loudmouthed Yahiko, and fox-faced Megumi, with a tongue sharper and slyer than Kenshin's sword - - and the doc and his nieces and the girls at the Akabeko and even that brat in Kyoto and her freaky Oniwaban family - - Damnit, he missed all the familiar faces, and wondering around the mainland for three years was just getting - - old.

So he started thinking about maybe just meandering his way back to Japan and seeing what was what with the land of his birth. He didn't necessarily have to head straight back to Tokyo. It wasn't like he was mooning over the lack of Kenshin's company or the taste of Kaoru's lumpy rice. It wasn't like he was almost afraid to see how smoothly life there was running without him. How nobody even much remembered his name, much less missed his presence. It wasn't like he was a little - - just a little, mind you - - worried about what sort of changes had gone on since he'd left.

If Kaoru had had her way - - probably a great many. She probably had Kenshin on a short leash by now and Kenshin - - enigma that he was - - probably had that idyllic smile on his face over the whole situation. Probably was right happy jumping at Kaoru's whim. He'd been leaning that way with ever increasing latitude those last few months Sano had been in Tokyo anyway - - even more so after the scare of thinking her dead and once that scare had been banished - - well, it had been pretty clear that Kenshin had been damned and determined not to let it happen again. It had been a mixture of love and honor and a sincere desire to protect an innocent - - to protect in order to make up for all the past ill-deeds done - - that firmly planted Kenshin in Kaoru's camp, Sano was certain of that.

Sano had decided they needed to sort out all the upcoming domestic bliss without his presence. Sano had decided that he had better things to do than hang around and get in the way. Kaoru had been irritating enough when she'd only been mooning over Kenshin. Gods help anybody whose stomach was easily turned, now that she was getting a return on those feelings. _He_ couldn't have dealt with it.

Not to mention the little problem with the law - - which maybe, after a few years had melted away to obscurity. One could hope.

So Sano started thinking about going home - - which required enough money in his pocket to get a ride on a ship. Which presented a problem, since money and Sano never stayed united for long. It took bumming around Hong Kong for two months, gambling and doing the odd job here and there to get enough funds for passage and even then it was on a creaky old merchant vessel, teaming with rats, that was headed for Japan, by way of half the Chinese ports up the coast on the way.

It had been a slow boat over and it took a slower one to get back. But eventually he ended up in the port of Niigata on the western coast of Japan.

It shouldn't have been that overwhelming a trip from western Niigata to eastern Tokyo - - it took longer to get to Kyoto from Tokyo and he'd made that trip before. But he got side tracked in a little village south of Niigata and spent a week trying to win back the few measly coins he'd had left to him after the passage from Hong Kong. He got lost on the nefarious mountain roads after that, and ended up heading west again before a priest took pity on him at a Shinto shrine and pointed out the error of his way.

By then it had started raining on the northern side of the mountains and the paths became miserable and muddy and the days overcast and gray and he thought that central China hadn't been so bad after all. The weather moved with him southward across the mountains. There was even the hint of snow lingering above the heights in the distance and Sano wondered if winter was coming early this year and hoped vehemently that he wasn't caught in the mountains if it did. He'd had enough snow in Mongolia to last him a lifetime. He preferred the more temperate climate of Tokyo.

He was sloshing through mud and misting rain one morning, after spending a thoroughly miserable night under a thick trio of trees, when the sound of a youthful voice raised in alarm echoed down the trail at him. Shortly thereafter a boy of perhaps sixteen came pelting down the trail with what appeared to be officials of the law on his heels.

Sano having very little love for the law himself, and a good deal of sympathy for those about to get their throats ripped out by it - - stepped off the side of the trail and waited for the boy running down it to pass him by, then reached out a long arm and yanked the startled young man abruptly off the track, smothering his protest with a long hand over his mouth and a hissed warning to be quiet. He then shoved the boy into a thicket and stepped back onto the path as the police rounded the bend, raising their batons in threat as they saw him. He was very obviously not the young man they had been chasing. He was about a head taller for one, and the sharp lines of his face spoke of a different breeding altogether than the flat, round face of the frightened boy. He smiled, adjusting the sack over his shoulder and stuffing his free hand in the pocket of his jacket.

"Whoa. Whoa. Don't point those things at me."

The police hesitated, staring down the trail past him suspiciously.

"Have you seen a boy?" one demanded. "He would have just run down the trail."

Sano blinked. "Yeah, I saw a kid. Looked like bad spirits were on his heels he ran past me so fast." He jerked his head over his shoulder and shrugged. "Still running, probably."

The men exchanged determined glances and pushed past him, stomping down the muddy trail in search of a boy they'd never catch. At least not today. When they were well and truly disappeared down the path, the bramble rustled and the boy stepped out to the trail, a delighted grin showing yellowed teeth. He had short, bristly hair and a faint scar above one eyebrow. Part of the lobe of one ear was missing. The kid had obviously led no easy life.

"Oh, man, thanks a lot. You saved my hide. If they'd caught me, I'd have hanged for sure."

Sano lifted a brow. "Why? You a murderer or something?"

The boy shrugged, looking a bit defensive. "Maybe I am. I'm no sissy-boy."

"Didn't imply that you were. Just looked a little young to be a murderer, is all."

"I'm not a murderer. I'm a bandit." The boy clarified for him, almost daring him to have a problem with that profession.

Sano shrugged. "Whatever. Say, you got any food on you?" His stomach had been growling for the last day. He hadn't eaten since the Shinto shrine he passed yesterday and he figured if he went another day, he'd die of starvation.

The boy looked him up and down, a calculating look in his eyes. "You look pretty shifty yourself. You sure you're not a bandit, too?"

"Will it get me a meal?"

The boy laughed, clapping a hand on Sano's shoulder in camaraderie. "Well, I owe you. There's a village up the mountain where I have an aunt. She's a good cook. My name's Bokkai."

Bokkai was true to his word. A good hike up a narrow forest path a poor little village perched on the side of the mountain. It was a pitiful collection of shanty shacks and struggling garden plots. Bokkai said the men in the village did a lot of hunting, but a good portion of what the people of the village managed to produce went in tribute to the mountain bandits who made this particular portion of the mountain their domain. Bokkai seemed proud of this extortion. Bokkai's uncle was the leader of the bandits. Bokkai's mother, it seemed had been a rape victim, and had died in childbirth, leaving Bokkai to be raised by her sister. When he'd been old enough, he'd sought out his father among the bandits, only to learn that he'd been killed some years back. But, his uncle, Chojiro, having lost his only blood kin in his brother, had been glad to take the boy under his dubious wing.

Bokkai as a result, had the morals of a viper - - but he seemed a cheerful kid regardless, and who was Sano to complain when he was getting a meal out of it.

Bokkai's aunt regarded Sano when he showed up on her doorstep with her nephew, with narrow, tired eyes. The eyes of a woman who'd fought all her life against strong odds and finally just given up to inevitability. Her husband was small and mostly crippled, having badly broken his leg some years ago in a hunting accident. She had three other children hanging at her skirts and Sano felt bad enough bumming a meal off of her, that he offered to go out and cut the pile of wood sitting at the side of the house.

"Do widow Hatayama's, too." Bokkai's aunt was a shrewd opportunist and pointed at the adjoining pile of wood next to the shanty shack beside hers.

Sano sighed and did it, figuring he'd done nastier jobs in the last few years. Chopping a bit of wood was no particular hardship. As he moved to the small pile belonging to the widow next store, a skinny child hovered at the door to that shack, staring out at him warily. A woman moved up behind her, looking almost afraid to come out and see what he was doing with her meager store of firewood.

Sano jerked a thumb towards Bokkai's aunt's house. "She told me to chop your wood. In payment for a meal."

The woman, a skinny, used up looking thing, nodded nervously at him and bowed. Then backed away into the shadow of her house.

By the time he'd finished the rain had started in earnest. He sat down, wet and chill under the uncomfortable gazes of husband and wife. Bokkai chattered easily. The children were solemn and quiet, watchful of him and - - and he thought, somewhat awed of their older cousin. Maybe they thought he'd made something of himself, joining the bandits. Maybe they dreamed of achieving so great a goal for themselves one day. Who knew.

The rice was passable and the stew wasn't bad. It had a few chunks of meat mixed in with the vegetables, though it lacked the spices it needed to make it truly good. He really couldn't wait to get to the Akabeko and sit down to one of Tae's beef pots. He'd have one all to himself. Maybe he'd even go there before he found his way to Kamiya dojo and Kenshin. Well, Kenshin and Kaoru and hopefully Yahiko. There were a lot of folks he wanted to see.

It was getting on into evening by the time he'd finished and the rain made the afternoon all the darker. He hinted around that a nice dry place to stay would be much appreciated and Bokkai's aunt hinted that she'd rather have snakes staying in her house in the dark of night, over stray strangers her bandit nephew had dragged home. Bokkai complained loudly and that started a shouting match between what seemed the whole of the family. Sano promptly gathered up his sack and escaped into the welcoming rain.

It only stayed welcoming the brief amount of time it took to thoroughly soak his clothes again. He stood there, hair dripping water into his eyes, shoes filled with mud and water and wondered what sort of chance he had of finding his way down the obscure mountain path Bokkai had led him up, and back to the road. With his luck, he thought sourly, he'd end up traveling back up the trail towards Niigata.

He sighed, reshouldered the pack and figured he might as well start before the evening sucked all the light from the sky.

"Ex -excuse me - -?" A thin voice wavered at him through the rain. The little girl from the shack next door stood in the shelter of her doorway, staring at him. "We heard them yelling. The walls are thin." The child explained and Sano tilted his head, wondering what she was getting at.

"You can stay here for the night. In payment for chopping the wood."

"Oh. And that's okay with your mother?"

The child nodded. Sano shrugged, never one to pass up opportunity when it came calling. He stepped into the shelter of the one room house. They were dirt poor, but what they had was neatly arranged. The woman, he thought, was a weaver. There was a loom with a partially finished square of cloth and a few pots of dye in a corner. The widow Hatayama cast a skittish glance at him, and busied herself with heating water. From the smell of it, they'd already finished their own evening meal.

"Thanks for the place to stay. It's pretty nasty out there." He broke the awkward silence. The child bowed. The mother did.

"Um - - where should I - -?"

"There." The widow Hatayama pointed to a corner where there was already a neatly folded, well used mat. Someone else used to sleep here. Her husband, he figured. He didn't ask how long he'd been dead. Didn't ask much of anything, because he could see he made them nervous and the widow had that bruised look in her eyes that hinted she'd had bad experiences with men in the past. It had taken courage to invite him in.

"Listen, I'm harmless - - really. Just passing by on my way to Tokyo. I sort of helped that kid Bokkai on the road and he invited me back to his place for supper.

"Bokkai," the little girl said. "He's a bandit now."

"Yeah, so he says. What's your name?"

The girl looked to her mother questioningly and the mother hesitated, then nodded.

"Minako."

"Hey," he grinned at her. "I'm Sano."

She drew back from him a bit at the smile, like the only time people had ever smiled at her was when they were up to no good. He chewed on his lip over that for a bit, then pulled his pack over and dug around until he found one of the fancy little cloth dolls he'd picked up in a market in Mongolia in thoughts of Ayame and Suzume. He figured this kid needed one more.

"Do you know where I got this?" He held it out and Minako looked at it with round, awed eyes. She shook her head solemnly. "I got this in a little village on the Huangh river which is just inside Mongolia. Have you heard of Mongolia?"

She shook her head again.

"Well, it's in China and it's so big that it makes all of Japan look tiny."

She blinked, trying to comprehend that.

"I got it for a little girl I know in Tokyo - - but, well, I picked up some other things I think she'll like just as well, so you can have it."

Minako looked to her mother. The Widow Hatayama knelt before her tea pot, wringing her hands. Finally she nodded and something almost akin to a look of gratitude crossed her narrow face. She had a fresh bruise under one eye and since she didn't have a husband, Sano wondered who'd hit her.

Minako took the doll reverently, cradling it in small hands. "What's her name?" She asked.

Sano shrugged. "I dunno. That's up to you."

"Suzuko. I'll call her Suzuko."

"Sounds good to me. I knew a girl named Suzuko once. She made pretty beads in Tokyo."

"Tea?" The widow Hatayama asked shyly.

"Sure," Sano agreed. Warm tea would do his damp self good. He got up and ambled over to the mat near the fire. Sat down in a collapse of long limbs and took the ceramic cup the widow placed in his hands. She poured the steeped tea for him, then a small cup for herself and for Minako.

"Thanks. I really appreciate this," he said, when he'd downed the tea. "Say, do you know how far it is to Tokyo? I've gotten turned around a few times already and I'd just like to know I'm on the right track?"

"I've only been once," the widow said softly, not meeting his eyes. "I think it is only a few days travel - - in good weather.'

"Really?" he said, pleased. "That's great."

"Watch out for the bandits. They hurt mama." Minako leaned towards him to whisper and her mother's eyes widened and she shushed the girl with a nervous flutter of her hand.

"Don't listen," the woman said. "Bandits hurt everyone."

Sano glanced from the girl to her mother. The way the woman sat - - it was the way a body held itself when every breath ached.

"They do that to you?" he asked, indicating her bruised face with a jerk of his jaw. "The bandits?"

"No," the widow said, avoiding his eyes. "I fell."

"No, mama - -" Minako protested and got shushed again with a sharp gesture of the widow's bony hand.

"And you live next to one of them - -" Sano glanced meaningfully through the wall to the house next door.

"Bokkai doesn't live there," Minako said. "He only comes home when he's hungry or hurt - - but they let him because they don't have to pay tribute if they do - - and Chojiro owes a blood debt because of Bokkai's mother."

"You talk too much, child," the widow Hatayama said softly, but her voice was tired. Too tired to argue the facts. But obviously she didn't want to talk about it, so Sano scooted back to his corner and his folded sleeping mat and sat there listening to the rain while the widow and the girl set the house to order.

Sano fell asleep on the mat, with his face to the wall and a threadbare blanket over his shoulders and woke to the sound of the loom. The widow had probably been up with the dawn, diligently working, while he'd slept the morning away. Minako was already outside, in a day that boasted only a fine mist, checking the state of the garden plot out back. Sano grumbled and groaned and pushed himself up. His stomach protested its empty state almost as loudly as his bladder protested its fullness. He smiled weakly at the widow, who only briefly met his eyes before her own were downcast once more - - and shuffled outside to answer the call of nature. The chance for breakfast, he figured, had already been missed. They'd probably not had enough to share anyway.

Bokkai was out there, talking with a man at the side of his aunt's house. He grinned at Sano when he saw him, beckoning him over even as the man gave Sano a shifty glance and walked away.

"There you are," Bokkai said jovially. "I wondered where you'd gone."

"The widow next door let me in," Sano shrugged.

Bokkai grinned. "Don't let Chojiro hear of it. He's got a thing for her. Don't know why, skinny thing that she is."

"Yeah, well, I won't be staying long."

"Long enough for fresh brewed beer? My uncle just finished a batch."

One could hardly turn down beer and the possibility of breakfast with it. There was beer and rice and Bokkai's aunt had no problem sharing it with Sano. She even did it with a smile this morning.

"She's in a good mood." Sano observed to the boy and Bokkai grinned. "Yeah, we made out well and I gave her a portion of my cut."

"Oh, rob a wealthy merchant or something?"

"No. City yakuza. They paid well for our help."

Sano sniffed. He had very little respect for the yakuza. "What'da they care about mountain bandits?"

Bokkai's narrow chest swelled up. "They care that we know the mountain routes better than anyone. They care that nobody comes through these passes without our knowing. Somebody came through they were looking for and we found him." Bokkai's grin grew wicked and he leaned in close to whisper. "He found us really, so Bunzo the eight fingered says. Says uncle Chojiro and a few men were in the midst of a little - - fun - - when this guy come up out of nowhere and beat them off with a stick. All six of 'em and just one of him and I believe Bunzo cause I saw the bumps and bruises. Uncle Chojiro was madder than anything - - even though the yakuza had paid good money to keep an eye out for him."

Sano picked the last grains of rice from his bowl, wondering if he could beg another portion from Bokkai's aunt. Yakuza intrigues were the last thing he cared about. The recounting of bandit atrocities would only make him mad and right now he was counting on Bokkai's good will for a little more breakfast before he got back on the road. So, he might as well tweak the boy's ego.

"Oh, you guys must be pretty famous for the yakuza to come to you for help. Who was this guy, some rich merchant or some politician they wanted in their pockets?"

"They said he was some old samurai or something from the revolution but I don't believe that 'cause I saw him and he wasn't much older than me - - or you at least - - and there ain't no samurai any longer what with the new government and all. But he was good with a sword - - before the foreigner shot him, that is. Those yakuza left limping worse than uncle Chojiro and his men. But he'll get his, 'cause the yakuza left him for uncle to deal with and uncle was pretty pissed off."

Sano sat there and sipped his beer thinking about displaced samurai and young seeming revolutionaries. It struck a chord. Made his right hand itch. He balled it in a fist, then flexed the fingers listening to the joint's pop.

"You might not remember it, but the revolution was only about fifteen years ago - - there are a lot of samurai still about. Hell, I was in the revolution towards the end - -but I was a hell of lot younger than you are now."

Bokkai shrugged. "Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Doesn't matter. He's probably dead now anyway, after uncle being at him for - - what, almost two days now. He stopped uncle from having the widow Hatayama, but Bunzo Eight Fingers said he was prettier than her anyway and that uncle'd just as well finished what he'd started with him as with her."

"You in on this?" Sano asked, muscle twitching in his jaw. He thought he'd knock the kid's head against the table if he grinned and said yes.

"Nah. They wouldn't let me. Said I was too young and to go and watch the road. That's when you helped me out."

"How many of you guys did this samurai kill?" He had to wonder if retribution was justified. Had to wonder if there weren't bodies lined up somewhere if some honest to goodness pre-Meiji swordsman had cut through them. Those sorts of men generally left a trail of blood in their wake.

"None," Bokkai said. "Not a one. Lot of broken bones - - lot of aching heads - - but he didn't kill a one."

Sano knew an ex-samurai, ex-assassin who could sweep through a room full of men with a sword faster than the eye could follow and not kill a single one. A young-seeming, girl-pretty one, who you'd never think had prowled the revolution by looking at him.

"What'd he look like?" Sano asked. He thought he'd crush the ceramic mug he held if he didn't untense his fingers.

"I dunno. It was raining a lot. Like I said. Young. Not much bigger than me - - had a scar on his face." The boy made two diagonal swipes in the air with his finger."

Sano almost laughed. He sat the mug down with a thump, leaning forward to try and control the knotted breath that caught in his throat. To try and control the sudden impulse to smash Bokkai's face until it was bloody.

"Where's he at?" he managed to choke that out without faltering. Without yelling it into the boy's face. Without just jumping up and breaking things - - heads included.

"Back at our camp."

"You take me there?"

"I can't. You're a stranger. Besides, uncle Chojiro told me to stay away for a few days.'

"You owe me. I saved your life. Besides, are you a boy or a man, for them to shield your delicate sensibilities?"

"I'm not a boy!"

Sano snorted, head still lowered between hunched shoulders. "They treat you like one. I wouldn't let them treat me like that. I'll back you, if you want."

If it was one thing Sano knew how to do, it was tweak a teenaged boy's fragile ego. He'd had enough practice tormenting Yahiko. This one was no different. Not as sharp as Yahiko. Easier to work.

Okay, Bokkai, agreed, needing to prove a point. Okay, Bokkai, said, but you deal with Chojiro when he goes off. Sano could do that. Sano was more than willing to do that.

He didn't want to think about what he'd find. Didn't want to really contemplate whether that all too accurate description belonged to something he knew. Easier to walk and _not_ scowl and _not_ clench his fists if he convinced himself that it wasn't what the nausea in his gut insisted it was.

It was an hour's walk up the mountain, following what looked like a game trail for a ways and then through simple, dense forest. He tried to remember the way. Tried to pick out an odd shaped tree here a jutting rock there, just in case he had to come back on his own. All he needed was to be lost in the wilderness with bandits in the woods. If he could find that village again, he could find the main mountain pass. He didn't know if he could find it from here.

It was a rocky place where the bandits had their hideaway. A few crumbling walls hinted that it had once been more forever ago. He couldn't tell if it had been a temple or something else. The weather and time had eaten all the ornamentation, only leaving the occasional walls from which shanty shelters had been erected. Not many of those. Just a handful of run down structures. One had a trickle of smoke coming from a vent hole. The main fire pit in the center of a much traveled clearing was wet and dead from the rains. There were two rough beams buried in the earth and a cross beam lashed to the top ends of them. The wood was stained with more than rain. The smell of blood was too strong to miss, even diluted by the rain, as they passed.

"They took him down," Bokkai observed, emotionless.

"Huh?"

The boy jerked his head at the scaffold. Sano looked closer and saw pits and ruts where spikes had been driven in time and again. Saw the darker stains about those indention's and shivered thinking what had been nailed up there.

There was a man asleep in one of the open faced shelters, sprawled like he'd passed out from too much drink. His snores were a soft disturbance of the silence. There was another in the shadows beyond him sitting hunched over a ceramic jug of what might have been beer, half awake, simply staring at the dirt in a drunken haze.

There were a few more in the other shelters, mostly passed out.

"That's my uncle." Bokkai indicated one of the shelters where a rumbling snore emanated from under a lumpy blanket.

There was a space next to Chijiro's hut, where an old wall had fallen, making sort of a natural enclave. It was still open to the rain, but there was a wall on two sides and a relatively flat surface of stone beneath.

There was a body there, that looked dead, all limp limbs and pallid skin. Naked. The signs of abuse were - - gut wrenching. The hair was wet, making the color indistinguishable, but it was hardly more than shoulder length, so it couldn't be Kenshin.

Even the rain couldn't wash away the blood. He couldn't see the face, because the man's profile was pressed into his arm. They'd gone to the trouble to bind his narrow wrists to a ring in the stone. Why restrain a corpse? Why restrain anything that looked like it had gone through as much hell as this? From his position, bare bloody back to the sky, Sano thought maybe they had used him like the woman he'd let get away from them.

Of course it wasn't Kenshin. Kenshin would have never let himself - - Sano narrowed his eyes, staring past the diluted blood and the new gashes on the skin of that slim back and saw the line of an old scar, running diagonally from shoulder to side. His breath caught in his throat and the bile rose up. How long ago had Kenshin gotten that scar? He ought to know, he'd been there - - but his mind wasn't working.

Sano took a staggering step into the alcove, skidded to one knee on the stone and with a shaking hand pushed wet hair back from a pale profile. The delicate line of one high cheekbone was partially obscured by swelling. Blood crusted the nostril and a split lip was still slowly seeping red. His skin was so cold that Sano pulled his hand back in shock, but he'd felt no beat of life when he'd touched it. He sat there, on his knees, utterly bereft of action for a moment. Staring. Horrified.

"Is he dead?" Bokkai asked, snickering.

Sano blinked. Sano got up, slowly, staring at the few droplets of rain that spattered the stone at his feet. Took one step - - two towards the boy, then lashed out in an artless, backhanded blow that sent Bokkai crashing into the stone wall. The boy's head hit with a crack and he crumpled. There was a knife in the boys belt and Sano snatched it up, turning back to Kenshin's body. He severed the rope from the ring. Slid the blade between the rain swollen bonds around his wrists freed them. He held the mangled hands gently in his own. Cold hands with bloody wounds through the center of each. He pulled him up into his arms and Kenshin's head flopped bonelessly. There was no resistance in him, his limbs were loose and heavy, his skin so, so cold.

"Fuck," Sano said, pressing his face into Kenshin's wet hair. "Fucking idiot! Why'd you let this happen? I was just coming to see you."

"Who the fuck are you?" A gruff voice snarled at him. A shadow fell over him. "What are you doing?"

Sano sniffed. Laid Kenshin back down and turned to look over his shoulder. A big man stood there. His height almost, but much, much thicker. There was gleaming dagger in the man's meaty fist and growing fury in his eyes as he took in Bokkai's crumpled form.

"You Chojiro?" Sano asked, climbing to his feet.

The man grunted. "Did that brat bring you here?"

"You do this?" Sano asked, voice beginning to shake.

"What of it?" The man shifted, a sneer crossing his lips. A few of his comrades were stumbling out of the shelters. "You want a taste of it, boy?"

Sano's lip twitched.

"You know him?" Chojiro asked, passing the dagger to his other hand. "He didn't scream as much as a woman - - but he felt as good as one."

_"Wrong - - thing - - to say." _The anger swelled up inside of him, but it was a cold, controlled thing that he focused in its entirety into the clenched fist at his side. He lunged, faster than Chojiro could bring up the knife and his fist, backed by the power of the futae no kiwami, smashed into the bandit's broad face. Bone and flesh and muscle had no defense against an attack that could pulverize stone. The bandit's head shattered and bone and blood flew.

It wasn't pretty. The only regret, was that it had been quick. Too damned quick a death by far. The other bandits saw it and gaped and Sano snarled and yelled things at them that he didn't remember later. They were no great fighters. They were simple mountain bandits that preyed on the weak and the wounded and they were no match for Sano in his fury. The one's he didn't take down, ran stumbling for the woods, leaving him with the dead and the unconscious. He wished he'd killed them all. He did not share Kenshin's opinions about such matters. Some people deserved death.

Others - - did not. He turned around then, bereft of enemies, with nothing else to do but go back and decide what to do with Kenshin. He picked him up off the stone and carried him to one of the abandoned shelters out of the rain. Laid him down on dirty blankets and looked around for something decent to wrap him in. Ah, there, in the floor, a bloody indigo gi that had once been of a finer quality than anything these bandits might possess. He pressed it to his face and inhaled. It smelled of Kenshin. His then.

He pulled Kenshin up against him, pulling the gi around him, careful with his hands even though it hardly mattered anymore. Laid him back down with that folded about him, a more modest corpse to be sure and went dully back out into the rain to search the other shelters for the sakabatou, for surely it was about somewhere if Kenshin was.

He didn't find it. But he did find the rest of Kenshin's clothing and brought that back, figuring if he took Kenshin home, it might as well be in a dignified manner. No one ever had to know about what he'd suffered.

The bile rose up in Sano's throat again as he sat there, narrow eyed over Kenshin's body. He ground his teeth fighting against the ungainliness of tears.

Why? There was no one there to see and didn't a friend deserve as much? He grasped Kenshin by the arms and pulled him up, crushing him close, fingers biting into the flesh of his shoulders in his grief. There was a spasmodic twitch of the body in his embrace as his hands dug into the right shoulder. A reflexive jerk of muscles and Sano's fingers pressed into a wound that leaked fresh blood through the material of the gi.

Sano's mouth popped open. Dead people didn't still bleed, did they? They didn't jerk and twitch out of the blue. But he was so damned cold. But not stiff. There was nothing of rigor mortis about him.

Sano shifted Kenshin in his arms, pressing his cheek close to his mouth, searching for the feel of warm breath.

There. Almost imperceptible. A wheezing little trickle of breath against his cheek. Not much, but it was something. It was a sign that life still lingered somewhere beneath the cold and the blood. So much blood on the outside that he doubted Kenshin had much left inside his body.

"You in there, Kenshin?" Sano balanced Kenshin in one arm, using the other to brush back the lattice work of wet hair from his face.

Nothing. No smallest flutter of soot-dark lashes against ghost-pale skin. A little blood trickled from the split of a swollen bottom lip, which brought to mind the places where even more blood was seeping out. Sano hissed and looked about for something clean enough to bind wounds with. Finally settled on ripping bands from the bottom of the hakama rather than use the flea infested blankets the bandits nested within. Wound the strips carefully around Kenshin's hands, around his shoulder, with thick pads of cloth pressed to either side to compress the bullet wounds, and around the seeping holes in his thigh where the bullet had passed shallowly through flesh and muscles and exited diagonally through the other side. Not as bad a wound as the shoulder or the hands, but it had bled enough to carry its weight.

Bokkai had said two days. Two days he'd had these wounds untended and he'd yet to expire of them. He wasn't big enough to have that much blood in his body, but then again, he'd survived things that would have killed most men twice over and come out still fighting.

Sano sat there afterwards, cursing himself for not paying more attention when Megumi was treating patients - - when she was treating him, for that matter. He didn't know what to do other than stop the bleeding. He didn't know how to combat so much lost blood, so many grievous holes in Kenshin's flesh - - the utter listlessness of his limbs. He couldn't carry him the two or more days walk back to Tokyo like this. Kenshin would never make it. Kenshin looked as if he were on death's door now.

The only place Sano could think of to take him was back to the mountain village and hope the widow Hatayama would take pity. He didn't know anyone else that might show a grain of it.

It was still a matter of getting him there. Sano found the cleanest of the blankets and wrapped Kenshin within it; picked him up like fragile porcelain with an arm under his knees and one under his shoulders, not certain what other things were broken inside him and hesitant to toss him over a shoulder if there were broken ribs.

Either Kenshin had shed weight, or Sano had gained strength in his travels, because his burden was negligible. Or maybe it was simple adrenaline fed fear that made it so. Maybe his muscles would scream protest in the morning after hours of trudging about the woods with Kenshin's dead weight in his arms.

Of course it took longer to get back than it had to leave. He couldn't find the game trail. He couldn't find the distinctive rock or the twisted tree. He cursed his bad luck and he cursed the malicious forest spirits who were likely setting him astray. But finally he stumbled upon it, found a little stone trail marker that led to the village.

Of course it was raining heavily again by the time he trudged up that muddy trail. The rain made Kenshin and his blankets seem the weightier. But it served a purpose, Sano supposed sourly. It kept the villagers inside their meager homes, so no prying eyes saw him stagger to the widow Hatayama's door and softly beg for admittance.

The girl, Minako slid it open on warped tracks. Her small, wary face peered up at him, her eyes widening as she recognized him. He might have been carrying a corpse for the silent expression of horror that crossed her face. He heard her mother's soft cry from within, and the widow Hatayama rose from her loom and rushed towards them, shaking her head in dismay.

"No," she cried softly. "Not here. You can't bring him here. Go away."

"Why the fuck not?" Sano was out of patience and out of what small bit of tact he possessed. He was tired, he was scared and he wanted Kenshin out of the rain and someplace warm and dry and non-hostile. "He saved your life, woman. Don't you recognize him? You'd turn him away when he didn't turn away from helping you?"

The woman shied back, a hand to her mouth, tears of - - what, fear maybe in her eyes? Or shame?

"You don't understand," she sobbed, still at no more than a hoarse whisper. "Chojiro wouldn't have killed me - - what he did - - what this one did - - he only made it worse. Chojiro will punish me for it - - and maybe Minako this time as well. You can't bring him here - -"

"Chojiro's dead," Sano said flatly. "He won't be punishing anybody."

She blinked at him, disbelieving. "How - -?"

Sano just stared at her. His arms were starting to tremble from the strain. He hadn't felt it until he'd stopped moving.

"It doesn't matter if - - if Chojiro is dead. There will be another to take his place - - there will always be another and we have no protection against them. They'll come seeking him - - if you stole him from them."

"Please - -" he ground out between clenched teeth. If he went down to one knee now, which his legs were threatening, he didn't think he could get back up again. Not with Kenshin's weight in his arms. "- - help me."

Minako looked up at her mother, her small lips trembling. She laid a hand on the widow's arm. "Please. Papa would have helped."

The widow Hatamaya sobbed and stepped back, clearing the way for Sano to pass, flinging an arm towards the mats closest to the fire where she and the girl slept. Sano heard her slide the door shut behind him. Heard the sound of their feet as they followed him. He laid Kenshin down and flung the sodden blanket from him. Looked up pleadingly to the woman, hoping against hope that she knew a smattering about tending wounds. A mountain woman might, with no one else to tend injuries within a day or more journey.

He'd never wished more for Megumi's presence than he did now. The woman had the tongue of a shrew but she could work healing miracles with her hands - - and he thought very much, that they needed a miracle now.

Chapter Six

Sano sat against the wall with his hands clenched between his knees to keep them from shaking, because he was in their way. Even the little girl was more adept than him when it came to cleaning bits of wood and debris out of bloody wounds. He listened to the rain patter on the roof, listened to the soft sound of clothing shifting as the widow and her daughter moved, of their whispered conversation - - of his own harsh breath - - and preyed it wasn't all for nothing.

Preyed to any damned thing that wanted to listen for those wounds on Kenshin not to be as horrible as they looked. For him to open those amethyst eyes of his and murmur that he was okay, even though he wasn't. Kenshin was like that. He didn't like to worry people. He'd go out of his way to avoid it. Too damned considerate by far.

But Kenshin didn't. Kenshin didn't move at all. Just lay there in the flickering light of the fire, with a clean blanket laid modestly over his hips and the rest of him bruised and broken and bloody, while a used up, battered village widow tried to stem the bleeding and pack the wounds with mountain herbal remedies and bind his hands and his shoulder and his thigh and the various other cuts and slices and abrasions, with clean strips of soft cloth that she'd no doubt woven herself.

They cleaned him up as best they could, and wrapped him in what were probably the best of their blankets. The widow sat there afterwards, wringing her stained hands, staring down at Kenshin as if he were some evil mountain spirit come to visit her house.

"They'll look for him and for you," she whispered, eyes lowered, head bowed. "Chojiro - - he had a use for me - - with him gone - - they'll kill us."

"They come here - - I'll make them sorry," Sano promised grimly.

"And the ones that come after them?" she asked. "The one's that come when you're gone? Who will make them sorry?"

He didn't have an answer for that. He couldn't think beyond Kenshin's welfare at the moment.

"He'll likely die anyway," she said sadly.

"He won't!" Sano snapped. "He's been through - - worse." He wasn't sure of that, really. The wounds were one thing - - and gods, his hands - - _his hands _\- - but two days of exposure and blood loss - - that was another matter altogether. He wanted to go out and find every bandit in the region and smash them into pulp - - but the widow was right. There would always be more to take their places. Bokkai had said it was city yakuza who'd come asking for their help, though. City yakuza who'd wanted Kenshin dead. And a foreigner. When he got back to Tokyo he'd make some late night visits. He'd had enough shady dealings in his past to know who had connections here and who owed allegiances there. He ticked off on his fingers who he'd visit - - of who's blood would tarnish his knuckles first.

There was the sound of men's voices raised in the night. Sano's head snapped up. He was on his feet, fists clenched before the widow could cry out softly in alarm.

"No. No, Please," she whispered, gesturing to her daughter help her with the mat upon wooden platform on which they ate. "You cannot. You cannot be here. Neither can he."

"So - - what?' Sano asked, staring at the two of them as they rolled the mat aside. There was a weathered trap door under it.

"Here," the widow pleaded. "Take him down here."

"What the fuck is down there?" He was not at all fond of small, dark places.

"My - - my husband made it - - for me and Minako - - when the bandits first started coming. They took so many women - - I send Minako here still - - when Chojiro - -" she trailed off, shuddering and Sano could only imagine what the little girl had had to huddle listening to while her mother unwillingly entertained the bandit chieftain.

"Please. They'll see you're not here and they'll go."

Sano cursed and gathered up Kenshin, blankets and all. He had to half drape him over a shoulder to maneuver down the wooden foot holds that led down into the pit. And it wasn't much more than a pit. Kenshin would have had to duck his head in it. It was maybe four feet wide and six foot long and one side of it was filled with stacks of supplies, tools, root vegetables in sacks, rice and various other things. There was a folded mat and blanket, testament that Minako had spent more than one night hiding here.

The widow tossed the mat Sano had used last night down for him to pad the first one with, advised him to silence and shut the door. He almost yelped as the darkness descended. A flat, impenetrable blackness that made him blink in momentary shock at the complete loss of sight.

He got the mats down by feel alone. Situated Kenshin and threw the extra blanket over him, sitting by his head thereafter, wondering what might be down here in the dark with them. He tensed when he heard the sound of voices demanding entrance. When he heard the widow's startled response and the sound of rapid talking. There was the sound of what might have been a scuffle, but there were no screams - - something crashed and broke and he hoped the trap door hadn't a latch, if he had to break his way out of this pit. He hoped very much she hadn't locked them down here.

Eventually the commotion stopped and after that, a long stretch of silence. Sano cracked a knuckle nervously. He hated the inactivity. He hated not _doing_ anything.

A voice came, whispering through the layer of wood. "They have gone, but they may be back. Please stay there tonight.'

Shit.

"Fine," he hissed, capitulating to her fear. They retreated, leaving him in pitch silence. There was only Kenshin for company and he was poor companionship at best this night. Sano reached a hand out blindly and touched his hair. Dry now. Thick and soft and so damned short. Tragic, the loss of that hair - - he ran shoulder length strands through his fingers, then caught himself and pulled his hand back, berating himself for bemoaning the loss of a man's hair. It wasn't seemly. It wasn't like Kenshin was a girl he'd been courting.

But - - well, he _had_ liked the hair, Damnit. Had appreciated the way it swayed when Kenshin walked - - like a luxurious, auburn tail. A man could admire such aesthetic things, couldn't he - - without seeming peculiar?

He returned his hand to it out of stubbornness and the feel of it calmed him somewhat. Made the dark a little less oppressive. It was chilly here though, encased in earth. Like a grave, he thought, with a shiver. It would do Kenshin no good, cold as he already was.

Sano slid his hand down to Kenshin's face, pressing his knuckles to his cheek. Still cool. Maybe it was the loss of so much blood. Maybe it was all the time spent in cold mountain rain. Sano didn't know the particulars of such things.

He stretched his legs out next to Kenshin, covering them with the outer blanket, and sat there with his arms crossed over his chest, holding the thin weave of his jacket closed over his chest. He was damned cold and he hadn't even lost blood. Damned uncomfortable place to spend the night, with his back to a rough plank wall and the smell of earth so strong he couldn't get images of graves out of his mind. He wondered what earth demons might be lurking about in the dark, attracted by the scent of Kenshin's blood and Kenshin's nearness to death. He didn't know if he could fight off evil spirits, though he'd try.

"Idiot," he whispered into the darkness again, still stung by the amazement that Kenshin had let himself be so thoroughly fucked-up. The foundation of a great many of his beliefs and ideals throughout the last few years of his life had been based upon Himura Kenshin's infallibility. It was like waking up one morning and having the sky be green instead of blue. Some things just didn't happen. Some things weren't supposed to happen. Kenshin overwhelmed by a ragtag bunch of mountain bandits was one of those things.

Sano shuddered and sneezed. He wiped a hand under his nose and cast a nasty glare upwards where the widow and her daughter were probably snuggled up warmly by the fire. He scooted down under the blanket, with the widow's winter food stock pressed against one shoulder and Kenshin's head at the other. Damned little space for a man to get comfortable. He shifted to his side and that didn't work either, not without jamming Kenshin with his knee and with no proper place to put his arms.

Kenshin didn't complain of his shifting about though, so Sano sighed and shoved an arm behind his head and wormed his torso close enough to achieve some small bit of comfort. Like he would sleep with a woman, his bigger body curled around a smaller one. It was okay, if Kenshin slept through it. It was okay to press his cheek against Kenshin's hair and snake his arm across his stomach if nobody ever saw. Besides which, it was a generous sharing of his body heat, which Kenshin needed. And it felt - - nice. It just felt good to cradle Kenshin in his arms when he was battered and bruised and needed _Sano_ for a change.

Sano had hardly realized he'd slept when the intrusion of gray light pierced the thin veil of his lids. He was warm and he was snug and he never had taken well to rising early in the morn. He blinked grit out of his eyes and glared up at the square of hazy light above. Two faces peered down.

"What?" he said, testy.

"How - - is he?" the widow asked hesitantly.

Sano blinked and realized he was wound rather intimately about another male body. His initial embarrassed reflex of jerking away was hampered by the sacks at his back and the sluggish realization that doing so might do Kenshin more harm than good.

"I don't know," he snapped, wondering if they'd expected him to stay awake all night with a hand on Kenshin's pulse. But, he had a hand on his stomach, under the blanket, resting on very smooth, soft skin that was warm to the touch. Very warm.

If he'd started out the night sharing his heat with Kenshin, then Kenshin had turned the tables on him during the early hours of morning, going from alarmingly cool flesh to alarmingly warm.

"Damn - - he's hot." Sano pushed himself up and pressed a hand to Kenshin's face.

"Fever," the widow said it like it had been as inevitable as the monsoons.

"Can I bring him up?"

"No," she said quickly. "They're still in the village."

"Well, we're not staying in this damned pit." One night was enough.

"Better not to move him."

"Its damned cold down here." And dark. "And I've gotta take a leak."

He climbed out of the pit and stretched. Took his leak in a jug in the corner, which the girl took outside and disposed of. Cold rice for breakfast and warm tea.

"Here. He'll be warmer with this." The widow gave him Kenshin's gi, all clean and neatly folded. It still bore ragged holes in the cloth and the weakened stains of blood which were damned hard to get out.

"Wake him if you can," she said. "And make him take this." She had a ceramic pot of what smelled like herbal tea.

"It's too cramped down there."

"Move things up here." The widow Hatayama had an answer for everything. She was desperate, he thought, to preserve the questionable safety of herself and her daughter. So Sano grumbled and bitched and spent an hour shifting things carefully out of the pit to a corner of the house and ended up with slightly more room than he'd had before. They all froze in the midst of this process at the sound of yelling outside. It sounded as if drunken men were raising a ruckus. It probably was.

"They hang around the village a lot?" Sano asked softly, his eye to a crack in the door.

"Many of them have blood relations here," the widow said fearfully. "Like Bokkai - - "

Blood relations through rape, then. It was a wonder the widow Hatayama had escaped the same fate. Bearing some get of Chojiro. Maybe a smart mountain woman knew ways to avoid such a thing.

"Please - - go back down," she pleaded and he reluctantly returned to the pit, with a bowl of rice, a jug of warm tea and a lantern which he sat on a wooden stool he'd left in the corner. They shut him in, but he had the lamp this time and more room to move. It didn't feel as much like a grave.

He sat down cross-legged next to Kenshin and put a hand to his forehead. His skin was dry and warm, not the sweaty sort of fever that Sano was used to. It was like his body was so hot, that it ate up the moisture before it could gather.

"Wake up, Kenshin," he said softly, brushing hair aside, running a thumb around the edges of a swollen cut running from temple to hairline. "I really need for you to wake up and take some tea."

He got an arm under Kenshin's shoulders and gently levered him up. Got himself against the wall with Kenshin's in the crook of his arm. Kenshin's head lolled. Sano pressed his hand against Kenshin's forehead and tilted it back.

"If you don't wake up, I'm gonna have to pour it down your throat. It'd be nicer if you took it on your own - - but she said you needed it - - so you're gonna get it one way or another, hear me?"

Kenshin obviously didn't take his threats seriously. Sano sighed and reached for the gi, slid the blankets off Kenshin's shoulders and tentatively picked up his bandaged hand to slip through the arm. One through and he gingerly lifted the other one. The bandages of Kenshin's left hand were stained with blood and his fingers hot and a little swollen. A man could lose a limb from such infection. Frightening, frightening thought - - Kenshin crippled in such a manner.

Kenshin jerked as Sano turned the hand. His whole body convulsed and he lunged weakly back against Sano's chest. A reflexive, defensive gesture that he hadn't the strength to back up.

"Whoa, whoa - - it's me, Kenshin. Calm down, calm down." He wrapped his arms Kenshin's slim torso to keep him from twisting away and was surprised at the ease of his success. The struggles ceased, but Sano thought it was more from sheer exhaustion than recognition of his voice.

But then, Kenshin could still surprise him.

"S- -Sano?" A hoarse whisper. A disoriented whisper. His body was quaking ever so slightly.

"Hey - - you didn't forget me after all." Sano leaned over so Kenshin could see him. Kenshin blinked, long and slow with that glazed look of the deathly ill.

"I - - thought you were - - dead. You didn't come back - - and you promised - - you'd come back." The clear amethyst of his eyes was almost indistinct against the black of dilated pupils. There was nothing coherent in his gaze.

"Yeah - - well - - I figured you were busy - -"

"It's cold." Kenshin's lashes fluttered shut and Sano shook him a little to keep him awake. "No you don't. You need to drink some tea."

He got the luke warm tea and sloshed some of it into a cup and got even less of that into Kenshin's mouth. He made a terrible nursemaid. He figured half a cup would have to do for the time being - - and he was lucky Kenshin stayed conscious for that much. He got the widow down in the pit to look at the swollen hand and she washed out the wound, pressing yellow puss from the torn flesh and repacking it with herbs. They checked the other major wounds while they were at it, but none of the others seemed as bad as Kenshin's left hand.

Kenshin slept through it all. Trembling occasionally, jerking a little when they messed with his hands. Slept until Sano had to shake him awake again to make him take more herbal tea and a weak broth.

"Kaoru - -" Kenshin said softy, in the midst of that. "I'm late - - I'm sorry - - I am - - but there was a fair on the Nihonbashi Bridge - -"

"What? You had to stop and people watch?" Sano knew Kenshin well enough to be familiar with his eccentricities. He was an avid observer of humanity, even if he held himself apart from it on most occasions.

Kenshin babbled more things, off and on, in and out of consciousness. Sano answered back for the most part. He slept that night with the small lantern flickering, his body wrapped around a fevered Kenshin.

Woke up the next morning to an elbow in the face and a panicked, not quite sane Kenshin trying to claw his way out of the tight space they shared. It was hard enough getting one's wits back when woken normally out of a sound, pleasant sleep, much less when one had a desperate samurai on one's hands. Sano tasted blood in his mouth. He lost the air in his lungs from Kenshin's knee in his side and only got the upper hand - - despite Kenshin's weakness - - when Kenshin aimed a blow at his face and was lucky enough to connect.

Sano figured it hurt Kenshin a lot more than it hurt him. Kenshin cried out, going boneless of a sudden, curled around his damaged hand in the midst of tangled blankets. Sano spit blood against the far wall and laid a hesitant hand on Kenshin's shoulder. Kenshin flinched in reaction, curling tighter, cradling his hand. Not anyplace close to being in his right mind.

"It's me. Sano. Remember?" he tried touching again. Didn't get the cringing this time, so boldly pulled the smaller man up against his chest. Kenshin was stiff and unresponsive against him. Lips pressed tight, lashes fluttering on his cheeks. His skin was warm through the gi, hot where Sano's hand touched bare flesh.

"Its okay. Its okay." Sano felt the bumbling fool. He didn't know how to give the necessary assurances. Didn't know what was going through Kenshin's fevered mind. What pain he was feeling. What horrors he was reliving. He tightened his arms and rested his chin on the top of Kenshin's head.

"Sano?"

"Hey. Yeah."

Kenshin pressed his face into Sano's neck and shuddered; clutched weakly at the back of Sano's jacket, but his fingers failed him and he made a helpless, choked sound.

"Its okay." Back to that same mantra, which might be a blatant lie, but Sano didn't know what else to say.

"Sano - - I have - - have to - -" He trailed off, losing the train of thought.

Sano thought about all the things Kenshin might have to do and figured what would be at the top of his list right about now.

"You need to take a leak?"

A long pause and he figured Kenshin had drifted off on him. Then a small inclination of the head on his shoulder. Okay. The widow had provided a container for that, though Sano hadn't figured he'd have to help in the operation. But Kenshin's hands weren't much good to him at the moment. He wasn't much good for anything, that short burst of desperate energy having used up everything he'd had. So Sano blushed like a virgin on her marriage night and took care of things, and hoped to hell Kenshin was too out of it to ever remember.

There was blood in his urine, which made a man cringe, thinking of the things that had likely caused that. Handling Kenshin's private parts made him recall the state he'd found him in, bound and naked and bloody and he started wondering what the bandits had done to him other than the obvious wounds they had treated. Made him sit there and grind his teeth and clench his fists so hard the joints cracked, while he thought about things he'd tried not to think about before now. Bad enough to think about Kenshin tortured - - but raped . . .

Bokkai had said as much. It wasn't inconceivable - - Kenshin looked young enough to fool a body into thinking he was little more than a boy fresh into adult-hood. He was damned sure pretty enough to make a man look twice at him - - to make an honest man consider things that an honest man might not normally consider about another man - - let alone what some stinking mountain bandit might find suitable to quench his primal needs.

Bastards. He stood up so fast, in a fit of righteous anger, that he slammed the top of his head against the low ceiling. Sat back down of a sudden with stars dancing before his eyes, rubbing the growing lump on his head. He needed to take his frustration out of someone. Needed a body to pound. Needed vengeance, because nobody hurt those few rare people that Sagara Sanosuke loved and got away with it.

"Sano?" Kenshin half rolled to his side and stared with heavy lidded eyes at Sano, sitting in his ungraceful heap. "What are you doing?"

"Seeing stars."

Kenshin blinked slowly at him. He licked his dry lips and said worriedly. "Is it dawn? We should move before daylight - - they'll be on our trail otherwise."

"Who. Who'll be on our trail?"

"The army. We took Arato's head - - they'll want retaliation."

Arato's head? Arato? Arato. Hadn't there been some Tokugawa warlord or something named Arato? A warlord killed late in the revolution - - or assassinated maybe? It had been a great blow to the moral of the Tokugawa forces, he thought.

"We?" he asked wryly.

Kenshin shut his eyes, letting his head fall to the mat. "Orders. They want it - - for the army to see."

"Oh."

Kenshin was silent for a long time, face hidden by the loose fall of his hair.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, long after Sano thought he'd fallen asleep. "He was an old man - - he didn't - - have a chance - -"

Sano sighed, rubbing his head one more time before shifting over to plant his butt on the mat near Kenshin. He arranged disarrayed blankets, absently smoothed strands of hair back behind Kenshin's ear, revealing the pale slash of old scars on his cheek. Kenshin's long lashes trembled against his skin, his teeth worried anxiously at his bottom lip.

"Doesn't matter. It's all over now."

"I should get home - -" Kenshin murmured, "Kaoru will be upset - -"

"She'll get over it," Sano predicted.

"Unnhhn." Kenshin was drifting again. Sano could tell from the way his face relaxed. Sano let him go, it being easier to sit there and stew with vengeful thoughts while Kenshin was silent and still.

He went up to the house after a while, and his face must have been terrible to behold for the Widow Hatamaya put a hand to her mouth and pattered over to him like she needed to prevent him from charging out the door and taking on every bandit in the province.

"I can't take this," he growled. "I can't take them carousing out there and us stuck in here like frightened rabbits. It's not right."

"Don't cause us trouble," The Widow Hatamaya begged and thrust a bowl of rice in his hands to distract him. Not just rice this morning, but rice with wild mushrooms and diced vegetables, which was a nice change.

"I made soup for him. See what he will take." She was very much trying to deter him from the violence he so dearly wished to perpetrate. He finished the last of his rice and licked his fingers, canting her a look that said he knew what she was doing - - and he submitted to it - - for the time being.

"All right. You come down and check his wounds?"

She nodded.

Minako watched the little path outside the house through a slit in the door while her mother climbed down into the pit with Sano. Kenshin woke up once, while she was pressing infection out of his left hand, not quite crying out, but definitely distressed. Sano put hands on his shoulders to keep him down, earnestly apologizing for the pain they were causing. Fever glazed plum eyes stared up at him, uncomprehending, maybe not even recognizing him.

"Hiko - -" he murmured. " - - did I take a hit?"

"Yeah, a couple," Sano said.

"I'm sorry - - I'll do better - - next time." Kenshin closed his eyes.

The widow tied the bandage off and looked up at Sano, frowning. "He shouldn't have tried to - - help me. It was no business of his. It's his own fault - - this." She wrung her hands so desperately that her short nails left red scratches on her skin.

"Not everybody turns their back on folk in trouble. Not everybody lets people like Chojiro walk all over them."

She shook her head, not able or willing to argue with him. She rose and shifted past him, climbing out of the pit, but leaving the trap door open to the shadowed light of the hut.

Nothing mattered. Everything did. The world was awash in blood. His own. Kaoru's. Kenji's.

Sano's.

He saw Tomae's dead eyes staring up at him and couldn't shake the image from his mind. Over and over and over the light of life went out and they were simply dead, brown orbs. Sometimes they turned into Kaoru's eyes. Sometimes they were his own and he was drifting above, staring down at his twisted corpse - - amazed at how fragile he looked - - how breakable.

He was cold. It ate at his bones and frosted over his skin until he couldn't move for the frozen ice that had encased his limbs. He couldn't think for it. Hiko bitched at him - - from a distance - - berating his lack of ingenuity - - his lack of simple common sense. He didn't know what exactly he'd done to deserve the censure - - but then Hiko didn't really need a reason - -

\- - He was running through the woods. The mountains outside of Kyoto, he thought. There was blood on his hands that he didn't recall the cause of. He had been overtaken by a group of enemy samurai on the road and had killed them to man. Eight bodies littering the ground. Yet he hadn't taken a wound. He was sure he hadn't taken a wound.

His hands ached. It hurt to grip the sword, so he paused in the dappled shadow and slid it back into its sheath.

The blade was backwards.

He furrowed his brow in confusion - - bewildered that this blade could steal so many lives. It wasn't supposed to. But he'd seen the blood and the sliced flesh and the gasping last breaths of men he didn't even know.

He hadn't the time to wonder, though. There was a battle over the ridge where he was supposed to be.

Only it wasn't a field of death, littered with the bodies of men and horses - - it was a small mountain house, with its small garden plot that reeked of familiarity. Tomae came to the open door, dark, straight hair loose about her face. She didn't quite smile at him. She never really smiled. But she welcomed him, he thought.

There was a vivid red stain on the front of her kimono. His sword dripped with blood. He dropped it, fingers numb - - aghast.

_What are you doing? Kaoru asked. Why isn't the gate fixed? I asked you this morning and you keep getting distracted. What's wrong, Kenshin?_

He was sorry, truly he was. But Sano had come by and talked him into walking into town with him and they'd ended up playing at dice and then trying to talk Sano out of the debt he owed because of it. And Sano had scratched his head afterwards, looking sheepish and apologized for the trouble, though Kenshin doubted he really was sorry, and explained that it had just been a spot of bad luck and he'd win it back the next time.

_It's okay. But maybe next time you ought not wager what you don't have, that you shouldn't. _Kenshin sat on a low stone wall by the road and rubbed his hands, trying to work the ache out. Sano snorted and sat next to him, close enough to touch shoulders.

_It'll be okay. Just take this._ Sano handed him a cup of tea and he blinked at it. Take it, Kenshin.

He really didn't want it. He furrowed his brow and turned away, and Sano wrapped an arm around him and pulled him back, holding him against his chest with one long arm while he raised the cup with the other. Like he might with a child who couldn't be trusted to hold it on their own. He couldn't raise his hands to fend off the indignity and arguing any point with Sano could be exhausting if Sano had his mind set. So he relented and opened his lips to accept what Sano gave to him, and warmth flowed in and around him with the tea.

It fended off the snow. But not for long.

He looked down and found himself calf deep in white. The snow was spattered with blood. It mostly hid the bodies that had fallen into it. Yahiko was propped against the snow covered trunk of a tree, holding his guts in by hands pressed tightly over the gaping slash in his belly. The sakabatou quivered, tip first in the tree trunk next to him.

The boy gazed up at Kenshin accusingly.

_Look what happened. It's your fault. You gave me this and never taught me Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, to truly use it._

_I couldn't. _Frozen tears ran down his cheeks. _He tried to ball his fists and couldn't. Kamiya Kasshin Ryu is good enough. No one will come after you if that's what you use. No one will hunt you down - - I can't do that to you - - or to anyone - - you didn't need to know - -_

_You're such an idealistic fool._ Hiko stood over him. When had he fallen into the snow? _You won't pass it on. You won't use it. What did I give it to you for, then? My health? Fool! Insipid, little fool. You can't escape what you are - - don't you know that?_

_Kenshin -_ \- Kaoru called, wanting him for something. Something mundane and pleasant, like going into town for tofu, or fixing the broken track under a door - - or keeping Kenji out of trouble while she taught a class - - it was so nice not to have to watch his back or sleep with his sword. It was nice to wrap his arms around Kaoru and pretend that he was something he was not and might never truly be capable of being.

_Kenshin - -_ she sounded distressed. He could hear her voice, but couldn't find her person. The call became fainter and he more frantic in his searching of the dojo. There was something wrong. There was blood on the sakabatou. It seeped from the leather of the hilt where he held it. It hurt, but he tightened his grip anyway, padding through the rooms on silent, bare feet.

She was gone. It was like she'd never been there. The dojo was cold and empty. Frozen. His panic became palpable, lodging in his throat like a chunk of unchewed food.

Kaoru! He called her name. The rooms were endless. His foot slid on frozen blood and he went down to one knee, one hand pressed against the cold floor. He cried out as the pain flared, reeling.

She was gone and he had to find her. He knew the trail to follow - - it was only a matter of getting out of this place. Out of the cold - -

He called her name again and weight pressed down against him. A large hand clamped down over his mouth, a body pinned him down.

Darkness. Utter, hopeless darkness.

Kenshin blinked sightlessly into the void, Kaoru's name a shrill cry in his throat, muffled by the hand over his mouth. He struggled under the oppressive weight, but his limbs were tangled in clothing or blankets and the body was larger than his by a good amount - - and he had no strength. It bled out of him even as he strove to throw his captor off.

"Shush. Shush. It's me." A quiet whisper against his ear. Lips pressed so close to him that he could feel the warm rush of breath against his neck. He didn't register the _me_. But he couldn't argue against the strength that held him immobile. He tried to take account of himself and the situation he found himself in, but his thoughts kept drifting aimlessly. It took more focus than he presently had to keep them firmly on track. He thought he heard the faint sound of voices drifting down from above. Voices raised in argument - - in anger. The sound of breaking pottery. A woman's cry.

A soft curse next to his ear. An involuntary tightening of the hand on his mouth, a tensing of the body draped over his own.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." More whisper soft curses and the _Me _melted into images of Sanosuke. Only he couldn't tell Sano that he understood and to ease up because the hand wouldn't leave his mouth. So one had very little choice, but to lay there and endure, with a head spinning from lack of breath and a body beginning to protest from individual aches that made themselves known one by one by one. He was cold, even with the entangling blankets and Sano's warmth atop him. Cold down to his bones.

Eventually the noise from above faded and there was only the faint sound of soft sobbing. The Sano form released him of a sudden and pushed itself away, taking its warmth with it. There was the sound of scuffling in the dark and then a square of dim light crossed briefly by the blackness of a moving body. He heard Sano's lowered angry voice and the answering tones of a distraught woman.

Distressed women made him recall Kaoru and his own priorities. Hard to remember all the details, but he knew he had to make himself move - - had to go north to find her.

A pale, round eyed foreign face flashed across his mind's eye. A name came with it and he hissed. More images that made him shudder - - and he tried to push those away to some harmless place where they wouldn't interfere with calm rational.

With effort he kicked the blankets off. It was cold without them. His legs were bare. The soft material of his gi hung from his shoulders, gaping open so that cool air kissed his chest and stomach. He tried to pull it closed and his fingers wouldn't work right. They were hot and swollen and filled with pain. He opened his mouth - - shut it - - staring helplessly into the darkness at the damaged things at the end of his arms.

How - -? He half recalled the shuddering thump of a mallet driving a spike through flesh. Half recalled himself shrieking from the impact. He could recall very little else beyond that. Very little directly proceeding it, for that matter.

He got to his knees, hands pressed against his chest, eyes slowly adjusting to the faint light coming through the square in the ceiling. It was not that far up. No further than his own height - - but at the moment even that scant distance seemed impossible. He'd try it though, for he had to get up and out and find Kaoru. He thought he was late, very, very late, in his pursuit of her. The notion of that tardiness made his heart thud in his chest. The beat of it was painful almost - - Everything was painful.

Ignore it. Concentrate past it. Reach out the right hand, which didn't throb so horrendously and force his fingers to curl around the rung of wood at the top of the square of light. It hurt, but a body could focus past the pain. And if he got his arm up to support his weight, he wouldn't have to rely on the hand. The dizziness was harder to ignore. It made his head feel half its normal weight. Made his vision spin and threw his equilibrium off. Take a breath and let it pass - - only it refused to go away.

It was dark at the top, nighttime, he thought. There were still the sounds of low voices arguing, when he pulled himself to the floor. It was the floor of a small house. There were figures against the low light of a fire. Two big ones - - one small one huddled in a corner who stared at him with wide, shadowed eyes.

That littlest form betrayed him. Lifted a sleight arm and pointed and the biggest figure whirled and babbled things in a Sano voice and rushed over to get in his way as he was trying to get off his knees and to his feet.

"No no no no." Sano voice was saying and big hands grasped his shoulders and kept him kneeling on the floor.

"Let go," he murmured, indignant at the restraint. A woman hovered at the outskirts of his vision. Thin and battered. There was blood on her mouth, but he knew Sano hadn't done it. Sano didn't hit women.

"No way," Sano said firmly. "You're not going anywhere just yet."

He blinked past Sano to the child - - a little girl. A skinny, hopeless looking little girl. She clutched a small cloth doll in her hands. The sort of child that needed protection from the ravages of the world and so seldom got it.

"My sword - -" he murmured. "Where's my sword?"

"Dunno," Sano said. "All I found was you."

His sword. His sword. He needed it. He felt naked and helpless without it. How horribly careless of him to lose it. Oh, but maybe he hadn't. Maybe he'd - - given it to Yahiko.

He shuddered, pressing his lip between teeth - - thinking himself the proper idiot.

"Hey," Sano got an arm around him. "You're gonna freeze. Come by the fire."

"No," the woman whispered. "What if they come back."

"Then I kick their asses. I'm not shoving him back down there when he's gone to all the trouble to come up."

"I need to go - -" Kenshin insisted, single minded in that goal. "Kaoru - -"

"Will be fine. You're the problem, idiot." Sano levered him up and his legs refused to hold his weight and his vision spun precariously, so Sano ended up half carrying him to the mat by the fire. The room spun off kilter and he had no center, no balance and the lack frightened him.

"Where you gonna go when you can't even walk? You have any of that tea left?"

Sano held a cup up to him, insistent - - like the Sano he'd seen in the dream - - had it been a dream? One hoped so. One fervently hoped so, considering the other things he'd seen there.

"Sano - -" he tried to push the cup away, needing to impress upon Sano the importance of why he had to leave. "- - He took them - - I thought this way - - but he lied. I have to find them."

"Who's he and who did he take and where?"

Too many questions. They made Kenshin's head pound. He lifted a hand to press against his face, but the movement send blades of pain up through his fingers. He picked clumsily at the bandages, distracted and Sano caught his wrists and held them apart.

"Kenshin!" Sano said, a little sharp. A little worried sounding.

Kenshin blinked up at him.

"Who? Who do you have to find?"

The memory came flooding back. The fear. He had forgotten for a moment what he needed to do. Where he needed to go. To Sendai after Winter. Because that's where Winter said he would meet up with the ship carrying Kaoru and Kenji. But he was far off track and he had no notion of how much time he'd lost.

"Kaoru," he said softly. "Kenji."

"Who's Kenji?" Kenshin heard Sano ask, before he slumped forwards, into Sano's arms and the world went away.

Chapter Seven

You knew Kenshin was fucked up when Kaoru was in danger and he couldn't stay awake long enough to spill all the grim details - - much less rush off to save the twit.

So, he'd married her after all. Well, he hadn't said as much in his feverish ramblings, but he'd managed to explain that Kenji was his son and he was too damned honorable by far to have a son by a woman he hadn't taken vows to. Hell, he probably hadn't slept with her until he'd married her.

Perfect. Proved right yet again. Sano thought he might make a damn fine mystic, as adept as he was at telling the future. His current prediction was that he probably wouldn't even get a straight story out of Kenshin until tomorrow, if then. Kenshin still had that high, dry fever which the widow said wasn't good. He'd made a couple of his wounds bleed again when he'd climbed up top. His right hand and his shoulder were seeping red. The widow tore more strips of cloth, soaked them in herbal water and rebandaged all the wounds.

Sano refused to go back down in the pit. And the widow, with her recently battered face, bowed her head and agreed. They had come to her in the night, drunk and grieving, wanting her to pay her respects to Chojiro. She had declined and they'd hurt her for it. They hadn't asked if she'd seen Sano - -much less Kenshin. Maybe they figured they were long gone. Fools should have know better considering the condition they'd left Kenshin in.

So they left him on the mat by the fire, and the widow and her daughter bedded down together against the wall. Sano sat with his side to the warmth, awake and wary, just in case any bandits decided to try the widow's house again before the night was out.

He nodded off, despite his best intentions, before dawn, and woke to Minako moving gingerly around him to put water on to boil. She smiled down at him and he blinked and managed to grin up at her.

"I'm glad he didn't die," she said softly. And Sano blinked again, realizing he was curled around Kenshin's upper body. He disentangled himself carefully, running long fingers through his ruffled hair.

"Your mother outside?"

"Yes. She went to trade some cloth to the old man at the end of the street. He collects herbs and things from the forest - - even has some from the city - - she thought she could get something for his fever and for the infection."

"Oh. Well, that's really nice of her."

"You shamed her - - when you first came back with him."

"Oh - - well - - I didn't really - -"

"She understands that she owes a debt."

Minako had a very solemn look on her face. She was either small for her age, or a very somber, very unchildlike ten year old.

"Yeah. She does," Sano agreed, not willing to argue against anything that would end up helping Kenshin.

They got Kenshin up to take tea and a little rice. He'd drifted out of the moment of almost clarity he'd had last night. He lay limp and only half conscious in Sano's arms while the Widow tried to make him swallow the mashed rice. He was shivering off and on, from the spiking fever and the widow sent Minako for fresh water, which they soaked soft cloth in and pressed against his pale face.

The fever didn't break until the next evening. It was well past dusk when Kenshin woke in a sweat, insisting that he had to go and go now. He was easy enough to dissuade, simply by pressing him back down to the blankets and telling him that they'd go soon enough - - that he just needed to rest a little more.

Just a little more - -

It was dark and Kenshin was hot. He couldn't recall being hot for a very long while. He lay for a while, letting his eyes adjust to the scant light from the embers of a dying fire. His thoughts were difficult to collect, but not impossible.

The sounds of very early morning stirred beyond thin walls. Bird song, the mating call of insects - - the very light patter of rain on the roof. He lay snug against another body, which was part of the reason for the warmth and in the shadows he saw that it was Sanosuke, who had an arm across his chest and a knee over his thigh and his face pressed mostly into his hair.

It was not an uncomfortable place to be, when one let one's self luxuriate in the sheer physical repose of it. It was nice to lie there, drowsing against another redolent body. It was nice to feel the soft, slow tickle of Sano's breath against his hair - - He let his lashes flutter down, almost falling into sleep again - - almost, before other thoughts intruded.

Kaoru. Remiss of him to succumb to the comfort of lazy sleep when Kaoru and Kenji had been taken away from him. He gingerly attempted to extract himself from the tangle of Sano's long limbs. Sano was a heavy sleeper and Kenshin could tread soundlessly over dry leaves in the fall when he put his mind to it. Of course, it was not so easy when one lay in the embrace of the person of whom one wished to avoid notice. Nor when one's hands were dull, aching encumbrances at the end of one's arms. His shoulder complained and his thigh screamed in protest when he rolled to his knees, finally successful in escaping Sano's grasp.

He seemed to recall the echoing thunder of gunfire. The surprisingly painless entry of the bullet through his leg - - the body rocking impact of the one that had gone through his shoulder and taken the world away with it. There were only feverish flashes of imagery of what they'd done afterwards. Only vague recollection of how his hands had come to be like this. Only sibilant whispers of the things Winter had said to him before he had melted out of the nightmare and left only less eloquent, brutish figures in his place.

Sendai. That was where Winter had been going. That was where he'd said Kaoru would be. But for how long? He'd said he'd needed her for other purposes - - but he'd not said where. What if they were gone already? If the trail grew too cold, he'd never pick it up. He couldn't track a body over the sea.

Kenshin shuddered involuntarily, shutting his eyes at a wave of dizziness. He was weak. He felt it in the heaviness of his limbs. He could ignore the pain - - but the weakness presented a problem. He climbed carefully to his feet - - stood there a moment swaying, while the light headedness passed. He looked about the small house warily and drew back a moment in shock at the sight of two other sleeping forms by the wall. The presence of other people had escaped him. He half recalled a woman who Sano had argued with. A woman who had pressed poultices into his wounds and bound them.

He saw what looked to be his hakama on a rustic clothes rack. He limped quietly towards it, realized how badly he was favoring the leg and tried to correct the gait. It would do him no good if the leg healed weak due to his own squeamishness. Best to ignore the pain and let it do its share of the work so muscles did not weaken any more than they already had.

It was - - painful - - belting the hakama over the gi. The fingers of his left hand wouldn't curl and the right was only slightly more mobile.

_Thud._

The sound - - feel - image - - of a stake driven through his palm made him jerk in response. He curled his hands close to his chest, bowing his head for a moment, willing the memories away. Willing everything away but the determination to be after his lost family. He looked for the sword - - and recalled that he'd never had it to begin with. Shook his head to clear it of lingering confusion and searched for his sandals. He didn't see any of a size. Only small ones fit for a woman and a child and the soft leather shoes that Sano wore. It wasn't winter - - lack of sandals wouldn't kill him.

"Where are you going?"

He blinked and turned to look at Sano, who'd sat up on the mat by the fire and was staring at him through the shadows.

"Sendai."

"Don't be stupid, Kenshin - -" Sano pushed himself up and Kenshin narrowed his eyes, wary of his approach.

"I have to go."

"You almost died."

He had no time for Sano or his arguments. "Do you know where my sandals are?"

"Who the hell knows. In the woods. In the bandit camp. On the feet of one of the bandits that kicked your ass."

Ah, he'd been right about talking to Sano. He turned his back on him and walked for the door, concentrating on not limping. He felt Sano chase him down. Turned to glare over his shoulder before the hand could fall on his shoulder - -

"Don't try to stop me, Sanosuke."

"Try to stop you? You're gonna fall flat on your face twenty minutes down the road. Why should I try and stop you, dumbass?"

He inclined his head, willing to ignore the insult in favor of Sano not attempting determent. He reached for the door and Sano cursed and laid a hand on him anyway.

"Just wait a damned minute, Kenshin."

"Let go, Sano." Kenshin stood there, tense and angry and waited for Sano to remove his hand.

"The bandits are out there, you know. They're gonna raise all sorts of shit if they see you."

Kenshin lifted a disdainful brow and Sano leaned down and smiled humorlessly.

"Don't be so hasty. They almost killed you, understand? You know what sort of shape you were in when I found you? You feel it, Kenshin? How're your hands? You think you're gonna hold a sword anytime soon?"

He flinched at that - - that voicing of the incessant, treacherous little fear that even a reasonable, rational man didn't want to dwell upon.

"Take your hand off of me, Sanosuke. I won't ask again." He said that very softly and Sano tilted his head, gauging him, then slowly retracted his hand and straightened.

"Fine. Go and get killed. What do I care?"

"How long have I been here?' he needed to know that. Needed to know how much of a headstart Winter had on him.

Sano shrugged, an infuriatingly nonchalant look in his dark eyes. Dealing with Sano when he was like this made his head ache.

"You're not up to this," Sano said. "And you're too damned stubborn to realize it. All you're gonna do is get yourself killed the rest of the way and then who's gonna help Kaoru and the kid?"

That made him pause. That made him turn towards Sano and glare at him like he was an enemy.

"What do you know of it?"

"Just what you told me."

"What did I - -?" He couldn't remember telling Sano anything. He couldn't recall why Sano was here at all when he'd been conspicuously absent for the past four years.

"Not enough. I can put two and two together, though. What? Was somebody after you and they got in the way, isn't that the way it usually goes?"

"No - -" Not this time. He'd hoped never again. Sano was baiting him, he knew that. He just didn't know why.

"Leave me alone, Sano."

Sano laughed. Sano's lip curled and he jammed an arm out of a sudden, slamming a palm hard into Kenshin's shoulder. Either he'd gotten considerably faster over the last few years - - or the wound's were affecting Kenshin's senses. He went down, sprawling in the floor, knocking over a small table laden with spools of yarn. There were soft female cries and he realized that the woman and the little girl had been awake for some time, listening to them.

It hurt. It hurt bad enough to make his vision blacken around the edges, but he still shouldn't have gone down under it. He still should have been able to keep his balance and save himself that indignity.

Sano moved to stand over him, tall and shadowed in the dark house. Angry, maybe. At odds with him now.

"You can't even stand up under a little love tap like that, what're you gonna do when somebody really wants to cave your skull in?"

Kenshin stared at the floor, at Sano's ankles, hair a mask that hid the furious glitter of his eyes. He kicked out with his good leg and smashed his foot into the back of Sano's knee. Sano yelped in surprise and crashed down.

"I don't need you telling me how to fight."

"Yeah?" Sano glared at him from a like vantage, elbows propping himself up off the floor. "Wanna take bets on who can stand up first?"

"Quiet. Quiet." The woman was hovering at the edges, frightened, wide eyed. "They can hear next door."

Kenshin didn't care. Kenshin pushed himself painfully to his feet. His left hand was bleeding. The wetness stained his fingers. He staggered a step, his center so terribly off - - his legs shaking. Sano glared sullenly at him from the floor, not bothering to rise.

"Idiot," Sano murmured when Kenshin slid the door open.

Dawn stained the sky, but it was muted by the mist. There was a narrow, muddy little street outside this house and trees beyond that. There was nothing familiar here. From the rising sun, he knew in which direction north lay, but there seemed no easy path leading that way. How far off the main road he was, he had no slightest notion.

"Hey there, what's going on?" A voice from the house next door. A woman's annoyed tones. A man came out with a lantern and a woman followed, standing just under a thatch awning and out of the rain. A boy followed, fixed his eyes upon Kenshin and let out a shrill cry.

Sano started cursing behind him. The woman and the girl whimpered - - the woman muttering either prayers or curses to her gods. It occurred to him, that in his haste, he might have caused this woman and her daughter trouble.

There were the startled sounds of men awakened by the boy's cries and the boy himself yelling in righteous fury and pelting towards him with a hoe that he'd grabbed from the side of the house. He looked to be about Yahiko's age - - maybe a little younger. He had that same fearless look about him - - that same determination. Kenshin half remembered the Yahiko of the fever dream and lost himself for a moment trying to separate dream from reality, from truth - -

The hoe came down, sharp end first and his reflexes refused to cooperate. He saw it coming - - was painfully aware of the downward arc - - and couldn't make his body move to block it or even avoid it.

Sano's hand shot out past Kenshin's ear and caught the shaft of the tool and promptly smacked the pole back in the boy's face. The kid cried out and crumpled, clutching his bleeding mouth and nose.

"See?" Sano pushed him aside to get past and Kenshin's wounded shoulder hit the door frame painfully. He leaned there, panting while Sano stalked into the misty rain and yelled out into the morning.

"C'mon! C'mon you son's of bitches, I'm waiting for you!"

Kenshin wasn't good for anything at the moment. That was painfully clear. In a little bout of vindictiveness Sano hoped it had hurt like hell when he'd hit the floor - - but him proving a point to a pig headed Kenshin did not include Kenshin getting his skull smashed by any other interested party.

Oh, and there were interested parties lurking about. Bokkai's cry had roused the predators. They must have been in and about the village, sleeping off last night's drink - - harassing the villagers into paying respects to a man that deserved none. A few of them slunk out from the woods. A few from houses that they'd probably intimidated their way into. There were maybe seven of them, not counting Bokkai's bleeding self and Sano grinned with absolute delight at their approach. He'd been dormant too damned long and his skin fairly twitched in anticipation of perpetrating a bit of richly deserved damage.

The first one rushed at him like a lumbering bear. No finesse, no fighting style, just a big man with a rough staff. Sano planted his foot in the big man's balls and watched him go down with a choked cry and a reddening face. These men were little more than common brawlers when you got down to it. Less by far than he'd been when he'd first started fighting in the streets of Tokyo as a kid. He could have taken them then, when all he knew were the crude elements of hit and take a hit and if you didn't go down under it, give another blow of your own.

He laughed grimly while he kicked their asses, because he had a score to settle. His knuckles were bloody, but he didn't feel it. He took a hit in the side from somebody's club and that knocked the wind out of him, but a body learned not to let that stop him or he'd end up dead.

He rubbed bruised ribs afterwards, and glanced back with a triumphant grin to the widow's house. The woman and the girl were hovering in the doorway behind Kenshin, looking terrified - - just ashen faced and scared and that took some of the bluster out of Sano's victory. He hadn't killed these guys and even if he had, there would be more and word would get around that she'd harbored their enemies and she'd pay.

"Fuck," he hissed and stalked back to the house, yanking up Bokkai by the scruff of the neck and shaking the boy out of his bubbling whimpers. "You tell them - - all of them - - that if they start coming back here and harassing these people, that I'm gonna come back and kick all their asses for them. You tell them that."

"You shit head!' Bokkai wheezed at him through a broken nose. "We're not scared of you."

"No? No?" He tossed the kid into the street, jerked him up when he sprawled and herded him towards the trees on the other side. Found the biggest, thickest tree of the lot and focused his chi - - focused his everything into a point at the end of his fist - - and used the futae no kiwami that a renegade Buddhist monk had taught him to shatter it. Not just shatter it, but to pulverize it to the point that fine particles of wood dust exploded outwards and a section of some three foot of trunk just ceased to be. The tree toppled backwards, creating a ripple that spread through the trees behind it. The boy held his hands up to shield his face, wide eyed and suddenly frightened out of his bravado.

Sano turned around and walked back to the widow's house.

"You've killed us," the woman said hollowly. Minako clung to her side. "No matter what you say - - when you go, they will come and take their revenge."

"Then you need to leave." He knew when he said it, how ridiculous a statement that was. If she'd had the means of leaving, she wouldn't have stayed here and endured the hell that she had.

"Go to Tokyo," Kenshin said softly, face lowered, so that all a body could really see of him was nose and mouth. "Find the Kamiya dojo - - there's a garden to tend - - and a cat - - you can stay there. Tell anyone who asks what happened."

She blinked at him owlishly, terrified as much at this suggestion of change as she was of the bandits. "We have everything here - -"

"You have nothing here." Kenshin looked up and his eyes were narrow and angry. "They'll tread over you till they destroy you. Take what you can carry and go to Tokyo. It's not that far a walk. A few days."

She sobbed and clutched her child and nodded helplessly. "Who shall I ask for - -?"

"No one. There's no one there. Tell the students - - if they come - - that Kaoru is away. That she'll be back. Anyone that asks, tell them that I told you to tend the dojo."

"Who are you?"

He laughed softly, humorlessly. "Kenshin. Himura Kenshin."

She nodded and hustled the child inside to dress and gather what they could. Kenshin leaned against the doorframe, not making an effort to move, not looking at Sano.

"Will you see them to Tokyo?" he asked softly. "There are likely more bandits on the road."

"No." Sano stuffed his scuffed hands into his pockets. Kenshin looked up at him, a little surprised at that refusal. "They've dealt with mountain bandits for longer and better than most. I'll see them to the main road. But I'm going with you."

Kenshin drew breath and Sano held up a finger.

"If you even open your mouth and something stupid comes out - - like 'I don't need your help, Sano.' Or, 'It's not your business, Sano.' I swear I'm gonna knock you on your ass again."

Kenshin didn't say it. Kenshin stared out at the collection of battered figures Sano had left in the mud. He hadn't been out in the rain, but his hair was damp, strands of it clinging to his face and neck. Still fevered and flushed, still trembling a little now and then, but trying to hide it.

"You've improved."

Sano shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. "Yeah. Picked up some new techniques here and there."

Kenshin looked over his shoulder at the woman and the child, who were frantically deciding what part of their life to take and what part to leave behind. "You should not have brought me here."

Sano wasn't about to argue that point. He changed to subject.

"I never did find the sakabatou - - you want I should ask some of these guys what happened to it?"

Kenshin sighed. "I didn't have it. I gave it to Yahiko."

Sano gaped at him, aghast. "Oh for crying out loud, can't I leave you alone for a second? Why'd you do a thing like that? What's the shrimp gonna do with it?"

Kenshin didn't answer. He went back inside and slid down against the wall, with his bandaged hands propped on his knees and waited for the widow to pack her belongings. Sano stomped around in the rain, frustrated and hyped. He urged each bandit that regained consciousness to make a hasty retreat from the little village. Kicked the ones that were slow to rouse and ushered them on their way as well.

The widow was finally ready, with a tiny cart piled high with things stuffed in and around the frame of her broken down loom. Smart woman. She had a trade and had no intention of leaving it behind. Sano thought that with a little luck, she and Minako might do all right in Tokyo.

They walked them down the long winding trail to the main road. The widow lead the way, knowing the route better than Sano who'd only traveled it once and Kenshin, who'd never traveled it at all. It was a slow trip down, Sano pulling the cart and the widow and Minako following behind. A body pretended at more care with the cart over ruts and inclines than a body would have normally taken, setting a slower pace than he'd have chosen for himself or maybe even for the woman and the child. Kenshin was the problem here, even though he'd never admit to it and would kill himself trying to pretend he was in full working order. Kenshin was sweating from fever and limping when he didn't have his mind on covering it. He was holding the arm with the shoulder wound tight to his body inside the lapel of his gi. His eyes were on the ground before his feet and not at all on the surrounding wood, which was a dangerous thing for a man with enemies.

It was a damned good thing he had Sano. And it was a damned good thing Sano was such a charitable soul, because Kenshin's appreciation of his presence had so far been somewhat disappointing.

They parted ways with the widow at the main mountain pass, cautioning her not to dally in the trip south. They had the whole of the day to get themselves out of the bandit's territory and into more generous climates. Sano doubted any of the bandits would attempt to chase them down today. Maybe not ever, if they thought the widow had not taken the road to Tokyo alone. He wasn't sure they'd come after them at all, what with their leader dead and their ranks battered. They'd done their duty to the yakuza - - gotten their money - - so what gain to risk another beating for the mere sake of vengeance?

"I think they'll be okay," Sano commented, looking back up the trail one last time at the dwindling forms of Minako and her mother.

Kenshin offered no opinion, walking very carefully and very steadily northward. Sano shifted his pack and lengthened his stride to catch up. He could outdistance Kenshin on a good day, with his longer legs. Today he had to continuously hold himself back.

"So you gonna tell me more about what the hell is going on? Or am I gonna have to guess?"

Kenshin walked a while longer in silence, and finally, when Sano was beginning to growl a little in frustration, he slanted him a weary look.

"It's my fault. I brought him home. I felt there was something - - odd - - about him, but I ignored the feeling."

"Well, your instincts are usually pretty good - - he was a foreigner?"

A nod. "An Englishman - - "

So Sano got the tale. In slow, careful bits and pieces, as if Kenshin were considering each bit as he related it. Reexamining the details as if he might have missed some important clue while he was living it.

Kenshin had to rest an hour down the road, though it galled him. They drained the water jug the widow had given them and Sano refilled it from a mountain spring off from the road. They had packages of supplies from the widow's stock, which Sano figured would make quite a few good meals along the road. He had a rolled blanket in his pack that he hadn't had before and a metal pan for cooking. Kenshin had a pair of oversize sandals that had belonged to her late husband. She'd been generous with her things. Just as well that the bandits didn't get what she'd left behind, or the family next door.

"You know, it's not a crime for you to admit to being a little weak," Sano complained of Kenshin when the smaller man stumbled on the road. Kenshin glared at him, and pretended he hadn't heard.

"You got holes in your body," Sano said. "They fucked you over but good, Kenshin - - a little rest is only gonna do you good."

"I can't."

"Oh. Right. I forgot. You're too stubborn to take care for yourself. You'd rather ignore - -"

"Shut up, Sano. You make my head ache." Very quietly said. Very polite tone, words not withstanding.

"No, that's the fever, idiot."

How Kenshin did it was beyond Sano. How he walked that road only a few scant days after lingering at death's door.

They stopped with the full onset of night and Sano got out the supplies for supper. Kenshin sat down against a tree and was asleep practically as soon as he stretched his legs out.

"Idiot," Sano muttered and threw the blanket over him. He found relatively dry tender and managed a small fire. Wrapped sweet potatoes in leaves and set them at the outskirts of the flames to roast and boiled water for tea. The widow had given them herbs for Kenshin's wounds. Herbs for fever to put in the tea. Fresh bandages and directions on what to do for infection. He thought he remembered well enough. Kenshin would know, now that he was himself again.

It was getting damned cold and Sano sat close to the fire, feeding it sticks now and again, poking at the potatoes and wishing he were better at soup. He'd give it a try tomorrow. Throw a bit of dried fish in and some bits of dried vegetable. He could only muck it up so badly. He prodded Kenshin when the potatoes were soft and harassed him into eating his portion. Kenshin's appetite was dirt poor. He got down a measly half of his potato and Sano finished the rest. He drank all of the tea though and finished off what was in the pan. Then sat there clutching the blanket around him, shivering a little.

"She said to check your wounds. Said they'd have to be cleaned and repacked if there was infection."

Kenshin shrugged, not arguing the necessity. He let Sano take his hands and clumsily unwrap the stained bandages.

The right one was healing well, but Kenshin still winced and went a little pale seeing the damage. He tried to close his fingers involuntarily and could only bend them about half way before he made a pained sound and stopped. He looked about as stricken as Sano had ever seen him with that failure. Shocked and frightened by the shadow of being maimed.

"Just don't fuck around with the wounds," Sano said. "You don't give them time to heal right - - then you will be sorry. Believe me, I know. It took my hand twice as long to heal 'cause I wouldn't let it rest."

"Sano - - I had dreams - - nightmares of them doing - - this - - but it wasn't real. My hands - -"

"What else do you remember?" Sano asked it cautiously, carefully. Kenshin shook his head and held his hand close. Sano couldn't see his eyes to see what he was thinking - - whether there was pain there, or horror or simple confusion. He really preferred the latter. He'd really rather Kenshin didn't remember the other crimes they'd committed against him.

"It's okay. Never mind. Let me see the other one."

They sat there, shoulder to shoulder afterwards, with their feet out towards the fire and the shared warmth of the blanket.

"We should set watch," Kenshin said. "There are still bandits all along these mountain roads."

"Sure," Sano agreed. "I'll take first. I'll wake you when it's your turn."

Kenshin slanted him a look, disbelieving. "You'll go to sleep."

"No I won't. You think I survived traveling through half of China without keeping an eye out at night?"

"You traveled half of China?" Kenshin blinked at him with tired amazement.

"Yeah. Told you I was gonna see the world. Let me tell you about the winter's in Mongolia - - you think you've seen snow here in Japan - -"

Kenshin nodded off somewhere in the midst of the retelling of Sano's first winter on the mainland, but that was okay, Sano figured. They had all the way to Sendai for him to recount his adventures. What good were adventures after all, if you couldn't share them with friends.

Sano was asleep. Kenshin woke to the soft sound of his snoring and warm, dappled sunlight on his face. They had slid down next to the tree during the night, with himself lying close against Sano's side, his face pressed against Sano's shoulder and Sano's arm curled under his neck. He was stiff and sore and moving seemed a daunting prospect. The fact that it was dry and sunny beyond the canopy of leaves made it harder still. His hands were dull aches at the end of his arms. The bullet wounds were nothing - - things he could ignore. Things that would heal and he'd be no worse for wear - - but his hands - - the thought of being crippled in such a way terrified him. He might have given Yahiko the sword - - but he'd never, ever imagined himself not being able to take it up again if he needed. That had not been part of the plan. He pressed his forehead into Sano's warmth and tried to quell the trembling.

"Sano," he murmured, trying to find another train of thought. Trying to focus on Kaoru and Kenji and the path that led to them. "Sano, wake up."

Sano snorted and blinked, yawning mightily.

"Wha' time is it?"

"Morning," Kenshin told him. "You fell asleep."

"No, I didn't." Sano blinked again, and Kenshin could see the befuddlement of sleep chased away by the clarity of awareness.

"Shit. I did. Hey - -" Sano shifted a little and dragged his arm out from under Kenshin, blushing pink and distancing himself just a bit. "Uh - sorry. Didn't mean to crowd."

Kenshin shrugged, sharing heat with Sano was no embarrassment. Sano was - - well, Sano, and a body just didn't feel inclined to self-consciousness with him. And when a body was sick and cold with fever chills - - he was comfortable.

Sano insisted on breakfast. Kenshin would have foregone it, but Sano looked aghast at the prospect of ignoring perfectly good food since they had it. They compromised and made it quick. Warm tea felt good going down and it was a luxury of the road that Kenshin wasn't used to.

So they took to the road that snaked down the north side of the particular mountain they'd been crossing on full bellies. Sano was happy. Sano talked about the things he'd done on the mainland. He pulled a few things out of his pack that he'd picked up along the way. The conversation lulled when it began raining, and they walked huddled and miserable through the downpour. The cold damp made Kenshin's hands ache horribly, made his muscles groan in protest and his legs leaden and weak. Sano suggested stopping and waiting the weather out, but he refused, and Sano bitched and complained as he stomped through the mud next to him.

They came to a swaying wooden bridge spanning a deep chasm. Kenshin looked down once and a vertigo that he'd never experienced hit him so hard it made the world reel. Sano put a hand on his shoulder and asked if he were okay and he nodded, gluing his eyes forward for the rest of the way. The dizziness persisted though, even back on solid ground. Sano's speech became a distant drone - - not quite comprehensible.

He knew he was in trouble when he saw the ghostly shapes of armed horsemen cross the road, swords and imported American guns in their hands. There was no sound. No stirring of crusted mud in the road and no disturbance of the trees and brush at the side of the trail into which they rode. Sano never blinked an eye.

There was blood on the path further up - - he couldn't recall how many strides from the place where the troop had passed. Blood leaking from the woods - -

"Sano - -" Kenshin said softly. His voice was distant, overpowered by the pounding of blood in his ears. He wasn't sure if Sano had heard.

A man came careening out of the woods, mouth open in a soundless scream, running straight at them as if he meant them harm. Kenshin grabbed for a sword that wasn't there - - miscalculated in the placement of his feet from that lack - - from the shock of pain from clenched fingers - - and staggered into Sano. He thought, as he fell, that the man's throat had been neatly sliced and that the blood that coated the road had run from that wound. But he wasn't sure, for the figure faded as quickly as it had appeared.

Kenshin's sight went with it.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Eight

Of course Kenshin would chose the most miserable portion of the day for his strength to give out. It had been sunny most of the morning, though cool and only started raining again for the last few miles of road. One moment they were walking, Sano reining in his strides to let Kenshin keep up - - and the next Kenshin was reeling into his shoulder, rebounding and going down to his knees in the mud. He didn't even put a hand out to stop his fall, just sort of toppled onto the road and lay there with wet hair streaming over his face and lashes a dark, fluttering slash over his cheeks.

"Fuck. Kenshin, wake up." Sano turned him over and wiped hair out of his face. Cool air and cooler rain not withstanding, Kenshin was warm to the touch, which meant the damned fever, which had been ever present since they'd left the Widow's house, had come back with a vengeance to bite him on the ass.

Idiot.

He slapped him not ungently, irritated and no small bit scared. He was not equipped to deal with a serious relapse. Kenshin lifted a hand, murmured something apologetic and tried to fend off a second blow.

"Well, okay," Sano said, relieved, but Kenshin's head lolled again, maybe not quite unconscious, but not functional either. He was trembling.

"Okay. Okay." Getting out of the middle of the road was essential. Sano figured that was as good a start as any. He got an arm under Kenshin's shoulder and heaved him up; took a moment to get a grip on the sack of supplies and Kenshin's unhelpful self before staggering down the road. That was ungainly at best. A body only had two hands. Easier, though less dignified, to haul Kenshin's not considerable weight over a shoulder, which would only take one hand to steady.

Kenshin protested that blearily, head down and ass up over Sano's shoulder, but he was too limp for more than incoherent vocal complaints.

"Sorry, it was either you or the food the other way - - and I'm getting hungry, so the food probably would have won out."

He was figuring on finding the shelter of some big tree or a rock ledge to wait out the rain and let Kenshin catch his breath. But the gusting wind had blown a clump of bramble away from a stone marker indicating an otherwise mostly hidden trail leading off the road. The markings indicated a Buddhist temple and Sano figured his luck was looking up.

He trudged up the trail, shaking dripping hair out of his eyes that he couldn't reach with his occupied hands. At the end of the path was a set of steps leading up to a crumbled stone arch and beyond that the wooden facade of a temple. It was overgrown to a great degree, exhibiting none of the fastidious natural landscaping prominent of most temples and shrines. There was a feeling of not so much serenity about the place as - - emptiness. It might very well have been abandoned years ago, what with the Meiji dictates against Buddhism.

Sano moved in under the drooping front stoop, just beyond a set of listing wooden doors and called. "Hello. Anybody here?"

His voice whistled away on the wind, unanswered.

"Well, I guess it's just you and me," he muttered aloud and kicked in one of the doors. It rocked off its hinges, wood brittle from age or termites. He winced, not meaning to destroy it, just wanting in out of the rain.

He stepped inside to dank shadows and stale air. For a moment almost he thought he saw the remnants of destruction - - of a battle waged here in this most peaceful of places - - then the shadows rearranged themselves into simple disuse and decay. It was an abandoned temple.

"You are not welcome here."

Sano almost yelped in shock at the voice that whispered out at him from the dark, his mind imagining any manner of ghostly _yurei,_ _Oni_ or mountain demons taken up residence here. He dropped his sack and almost spilled Kenshin, whirling about to stare wide eyed into the shadows.

It wasn't a ghost. It was a monk. A frowning, unhappy seeming monk who stood at the entrance to the inner sanctum.

"Scare a body to death, will you?" Sano snapped.

"You're not welcome here."

Sano ran a free hand through his hair, wiping wet strands away from his eyes. In his experience - - with a very few limited exceptions - - Buddhist monks were not usually so sour faced and uncharitable.

"It's raining out there and my friend is sick - - wounded. We need a little shelter."

"Find it elsewhere."

Sano felt the pressure inside his head built. He narrowed his eyes and glared. "The hell - - What kind of monk are you?"

"Calm. You are welcome here." Another voice came from the shadows and a second monk moved into the antechamber. This one was kind of face and smiling sadly as he walked towards Sano.

"Brother Hideki speaks rashly. He means it not. Let us help you."

Sano eyed him warily, not quite certain he trusted this new monk any more than he did the discourteous first one. He wasn't sure he wanted to hand Kenshin down when the man reached for him. But he couldn't very well stand there all day with him slung over his shoulder - - and he did need help. "Okay - -"

"This way - -" the monk said, after taking a cursory look at Kenshin's flushed face and the dirty stained bandages on his hands. He led Sano down a painfully narrow dark hall to a small cell with bare wooden floors, bare wooden walls and only one small squat table against the wall. The monk unrolled a weathered tatami mat and gestured for Sano to put Kenshin down upon it. The monk then brought a pair of ragged, musty smelling old robes and urged Sano to rid himself and Kenshin of the rain soaked clothing they were wearing.

Kenshin came awake in the midst of that and batted Sano away, glaring indignantly at the attempt to rid him of his gi.

"You're wet." Sano sat back on his heels, the monk's robe scratchy on his skin and stretched tight across his broad shoulders. Kenshin blinked at him and Sano saw the thought processes as they registered behind his eyes. Recognition, understanding of the situation. Wary acceptance as he attempted to pull the gi off himself and couldn't quite get his stiff fingers to accomplish the task.

"Let me," Sano suggested and got a testy glare for that mercy as well. A sick Kenshin on a mission was not, he was finding out, a generally agreeable one.

"I can do it. Why are we here?"

"Because you fell down, idiot."

Sano let Kenshin struggle out of the gi and tossed the wet thing in the corner with the hakama that Sano had already taken from him. He handed him the robe and watched him fight with it.

"I'm wasting time," Kenshin murmured, finally victorious over the robe, but it was an exhausting victory and he collapsed back onto the threadbare mat afterwards, breathing hard, staring sightlessly at the dim ceiling.

"You're pushing it and your body's not up to it." It felt so nice to be the voice of reason. Sano so seldom took that role. "Listen, it's raining hard, it's late. Just let it go for tonight. Tomorrow we'll see about getting back on the road again."

The monk came back before Kenshin could gather the energy to argue that point. He had a tray with a pot of steaming water, a crock of powdered green tea and a pair of cups. He folded to his knees as gracefully as any geisha and poured water, then spooned exact amounts of the powdered tea into the cups.

"Good for the soul and the body." He smiled softly. A soft man, with a soft face and a soft demeanor.

Sano helped Kenshin up to sit against the wall, and handed him a warm cup. Kenshin held it awkwardly between both injured hands, and still the liquid trembled from the tremors in his arms. Sano sipped his own tea, shutting his eyes at the influx of warmth.

"This place is in bad shape," he commented. "You two the only ones here?"

"No. There are Kanbe and Jotaro, Masakado and Noboru and Tadahisa. We are all here."

"And you're - - ?"

The monk smiled again, still soft and sad. "I am Tokaji."

"You guys have some bad luck when the Meiji came down on the following of Buddha?"

"Luck is a thing we make for ourselves. It is an illusion."

Sano rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever. You'd just think with what - - seven of you, that this place would be in a little better shape, is all. But I guess you're all too busy contemplating shit to do a little housekeeping."

Tokaji smiled and refilled Sano's cup with water and tea. He offered more to Kenshin, but Kenshin refused, looking like he was about to slide down the wall into a heap on the mat at any minute. The monk carefully took Kenshin's cup from him, sitting on the floor by the head of the mat.

"You should sleep. Rest is the best thing for the ills that ail you."

Kenshin stared at the monk, as if seeing him for the first time. He looked to Sano, wary question in his eyes.

"Just go to sleep. We're in a Buddhist temple, its not like they're gonna poison our tea."

Kenshin's eyes widened a little and he glanced down to the dregs of tea left in his own cup by the mat. Sano sighed, frustrated and tired.

"I'll be right here. And I even promise to stay awake this time, ' kay?"

"You never stay awake," Kenshin said softly.

Sano sniffed and waved towards the mat. "Just sleep."

Sano would have fallen asleep if he hadn't forced himself up and out of the quiet peace of the musty little cube. Kenshin was out, curled on his side on the thin tatami mat, bandaged hands drawn up to his chest. Lying down next to him was just a little too tempting for Sano's peace of mind. A body could get dangerously used to such a simple thing as warm flesh and soft hair and having something to press against at night - - a body could feel guilty over the itch between his legs in the early mornings, pressed against said warm flesh and said soft hair - - not that the itch didn't come on a regular basis and was subsequently quenched - - it was just - - well he ought to be thinking of breasts and curving hips and womanly things while he was about it. Ought to be remembering that girl in Nanking who could do the most amazing things with her mouth. Or the little half Indian, half Chinese whore whom he'd helped out with a certain problem in Hong Kong and who had repaid him with admirable gusto afterwards. A very nice girl, who he'd dreamed about for long lonely nights after.

They were appropriate material for his dreams to explore in those moments just before fully wakening - - Kenshin was not. Kenshin was most adamantly_ not_! And though he blushed thinking about it, damned if he hadn't waken the past few mornings with red hair fluttering about his subconscious instead of shiny black. A body could get irritated with Kenshin for that sibilant invasion.

So Sano stalked out into the run down temple in his borrowed robe, two sizes too small. There wasn't a whole lot to it, the shrine out front where the public could come and meditate. A series of cubicles off to the back where the monk's stayed. A covered garden walkway that led through over grown grounds. It hadn't been a rich temple to begin with - - it was falling down now. He figured that somebody had to come up here occasionally to warrant seven monks. Or maybe they were die hard Buddhists who thrived on the isolation and wanted nothing more than time and space to contemplate the meaning of - - everything. Of whatever it was that they believed the states of their souls depended upon. Sano never had been much for meditation. Never had reflected much on the simple essence of nature. It was. He was. End of story.

He stood under the leaking roof of the walk, staring at the gray afternoon, at the sodden forest flanking the temple, at a rain that didn't seem to want to stop once it had started. It had been a dry summer, he'd been told. He'd seen the evidence in stunted crops on the way from Niigata. With the advent of fall the weather seemed determined to make up for the lack. He saw the whispering movement of a figure in the rain. Sloped shoulders and bald head of a monk, gliding through the rain with silent steps. Almost he called out, but really, what did he have to say to a monk? He looked down at his hands, at knuckles scarred from too many impacts and figured that the most talkative monk he'd ever met was Anji and that wasn't saying much. Of course, Anji hadn't been a monk anymore when Sano had met him - - he'd been on a mission of vengeance - - or retribution against the Meiji government who'd taken everything away from him. Sano figured he was still paying penance for that in the prison they'd put him in.

He looked back up and the monk he'd seen walking the garden path was gone. Just vanished into the rain or the forest. He sighed and walked back into the temple, back to the main shrine where he'd dropped his pack. Tokaji had provided tea, but not food and a body had to figure with this place looking as it did, that they had damned little to spare.

"Hey!" he called out to a fleeting figure, but the monk melted into the shadows of the back hall. Sano ground his teeth and stalked into the meditation chamber, looking for his sack, figuring there'd be trouble if it had mysteriously disappeared. One didn't generally equate monks with thieves - -but, these particular monks were damned eerie with their broken down temple and their ghostly movements. But the pack was where he'd dropped it and fully intact. It was only a matter of finding a place to prepare the food.

"Hey - - Tokaji. You around here?" he called out. His voice echoed off the walls.

Tokaji didn't answer. Sano huffed in annoyance, shouldered the damp pack and padded towards the back hall towards the cell where he'd left Kenshin. A simple fire to boil a handful of rice wasn't such a horrible thing to ask. It wasn't like he wanted to prepare a feast. Damned unsociable monks.

Sano's stomach growled ominously. He counted the hours since breakfast and groused over the fact that it had been so sparse, Kenshin being in the damned irrational hurry that he was in. It was one thing to want to follow after Kaoru as fast as possible and quite another to deprive a body of vital food in the process. He paused in his mental reproach, attention caught by a flash of movement behind him.

He spun, hairs on the back of his neck standing up, staring into the shadows, wishing one of the damn monks that lurked about this place would think to light lanterns. He'd thought - - he'd damned well thought - - he'd seen the glitter of a blade. But when he squinted into the shadows at the mouth of the shrine there was nothing. He walked back that way, warily, not distrusting his senses so much to shrug it off. There was no one in the shrine and no noise of anyone hastily leaving it. He'd have heard as loudly as the floor complained under his own passing. No one and nothing save the dust and the cobwebs and the accumulated leaves and debris gathered in the corners and around the base of the wooden statue of Buddha that sat nestled within its niche at the back of the main shrine.

Sano cursed, uneasy now. He put a hand on the wall by the hall and it came away wet with rainwater leaking down from the roof. He looked at it, and for a moment, with his nerves razor thin as they were, the water seemed dark as blood, staining his hand. He widened his eyes, looking at the wall, but all he could see was a darker stain of dampness in the shadows. No color pierced the veil. He wiped his hand on the pale brown of the borrowed robe and the cloth absorbed the wetness with no sign of stain.

Water then. Simple water and he was loosing his mind. Fine. He disliked this place. He disliked its inhabitants. Storm or no, he wished Kenshin were in a state to walk, for he'd just as well quit this temple and find a nice place off the road to shelter.

Kenshin came awake, blinking grit from his eyes, sensing movement in the shadows surrounding him. He rolled to his side, disoriented, muscles aching bad enough to make him groan, and whispered Sano's name. Sano didn't answer. Sano wasn't here, unless Sano was asleep in the corner - - which was possible, but no - -there was no sound of soft snoring, no sense of Sano presence close by.

He shook hair out of his eyes and peered into the shadows, vision slowly adjusting to the dark. There was a little grated window far up on the wall that let in a few weak rays of gray light. Not enough, though, to penetrate the darkness. He thought there was a figure there, standing in the deepest shadow. Silent. Staring. Not even betraying itself by the scant sound of breath.

_Who are you? What do you want? Where is this? _The questions hovered on his lips, unasked.

"There's blood on your hands." A low voice drifted out of the shadows. A bitter voice. Kenshin almost looked down at his hands to see - - but survival instinct warned against taking his eyes from the man in the shadows.

"It's stains on the bandages," he said softly, getting an elbow under him. It was hard. His head was pounding and thick, his limbs unstable.

"You're steeped in it." Accusation.

Kenshin drew breath, wide eyed, wishing Sano hadn't left him, because he wasn't certain it was a man's shape at all in the corner and if it were fever that gave him such a hallucination, it would have been nice to ask a saner head what they saw.

"Who are - -?"

"Leave this place. You disturb the peace."

"Son of a bitch - -" That came from down the hall outside, along with the creaking of the floorboards under heavy footfalls, echoing up the corridor and overpowering the soft condemnation from within the small room. Kenshin's gaze swung to the gaping door, back again to the corner where the shadows still lurked. Sano stalked in, dropping his drawstring sack on the floor, looking disgruntled and disturbed.

"Damned monks are starting to piss me off." Sano declared, seeing him awake.

"Sano," Kenshin asked softly. "Is there someone in the corner?"

Sano's eyes widened and he whirled, staring hard at each corner in turn. He frowned and looked back to Kenshin skeptically, one dark brow arched in question.

"Why?"

"I thought - - perhaps I was dreaming." He had to have been, for no person, no matter how deft of foot, could have slipped through that door past his notice.

"Maybe it's hunger," Sano suggested, flopping down on the mat next to him. He dragged the sack over and dug through its contents.

"Sano, where is this?"

"Old Buddhist temple off the road. Place is about to fall apart. Monks are about as friendly as snakes. Well, 'cept for the one. But, anyway, you hungry?"

He was, a little. But it was a hollow sort of hungry and he didn't think he could stomach much food.

"Where?" He could not recall how far up the road they'd gotten. He could remember very little of the walk after the bridge. He wondered if Sano had gotten them off track, for he didn't know of any Buddhist temples in operation along the portion of road he thought they ought to have been traveling. Shrines yes. A few small, untended ones. More Shinto ones than Buddhist, by far.

Sano shrugged, finding something edible within the sack and taking a bite out of it. "I dunno. Up a path. Trees, rocks, same old, same old."

Thunder rumbled outside and the walls trembled. Sano hunched his shoulders a little, looking sullen and no little bit wary.

"What's wrong?" Kenshin didn't remember him being spooked by the sound of thunder.

"Nothing. Why are you awake? I told you to go to sleep."

Kenshin lifted a brow at that bit of bossiness, but took no offense. Sano was curt when he was nervous and he was clearly strung taught now.

"I thought I heard something - - "

"Really?" Sano turned interested eyes his way.

"It was nothing. There was no one. My - - imagination." He hesitated saying that because he'd never been prone to fever dreams before. Never been prone to anything but the cold, hard reality that his senses shared with him.

"What'd you think you heard?"

"A voice. It said to leave this place. That I disturbed the peace here."

"Hunn. Sounds like that snitty monk Hideki. Said the same to me when we first got here."

Kenshin curled the fingers of his right hand, felt the ache in his palm, the stretching of a scab trying to form. Imagined the hole driven through from one side to the other and for a moment lost himself in that spiraling pit of horror that was born of the fear of being permanently maimed.

"Kenshin," Sano was crouched over him, his long fingers wrapped around Kenshin's wrists, holding his hands between them. "Don't pick at the bandages - - okay?"

He hadn't realized he had. Had missed entirely Sano moving to stop him. Maybe he was having hallucinations. Distressful that not only was his body betraying him, but his senses as well.

Sano offered him food, but it was stale and unappealing so he declined. Sano shrugged and consumed the remainder, not so picky.

There was a monk in the doorway that had made no sound coming down the creaking hall. Kenshin almost recalled his face. He recalled the pouring of tea. He blinked, wide eyed at the monk, and Sano, alerted by his gaze, turned and surveyed the visitor.

"I was just looking for one of you guys," Sano complained. "You have a kitchen around here? And that Hideki guy was in here bothering my friend."

Sano's curtness could be often appalling. Kenshin shook his head, trying to soothe over offense. "No. Perhaps not. I was dreaming - - and only thought I heard a voice. Your hospitality is generous, and we do not wish to abuse it."

He gave Sano a sidelong look, which Sano ignored. The monk smiled and glided into the room. "We have little enough to offer in the way of hospitality. We are a poor temple. But there is a hearth in the back, where you may light a fire and prepare food, if you wish. We have none to offer. I'm sorry."

Sano shrugged, gathering up his sack, very much interested in food and having very little care over abandoning Kenshin. Kenshin, woozy of head, with the heat in his body making his limbs trembly and weak, would have preferred Sano's company - - if only to chase away discomforting hallucinations, but there was little arguing with Sano's rumbling stomach. It often ruled Sano's good sense.

"You gonna be okay?" Sano thought to ask over his shoulder in the process of leaving.

"Probably," Kenshin sighed and lay down, wishing the monk would take himself off as well, for the utter quiet of his presence was unsettling. Even the rustle of his robes was muted.

"I will tend these, if you'd like." The monk's fingers ghosted out and touched the back of one bandaged hand. Kenshin pulled the hand a little closer to his body, almost refusing, but good sense told him that dirty wounds would soon be infected ones. He nodded, shutting his eyes for a moment to settle the swimming of his vision.

Perhaps it was longer by far than a moment, for when he opened them next, at the sensation of cool, gentle hands lifting his wrist, the monk had a tray next to him with a basin of warm water and strips of clean cloth. He unwound Sano's clumsy wrapping and furrowed his brows at the crusted scabs, the red edges of inflammation and the blaring discoloration of bruising that seeped half way up Kenshin's fingers and down into the fleshy part of his palm. Kenshin turned his own eyes away after a brief glance, stomach fluttering nauseatingly. The monk dipped his hand in the basin and let the water wash away the old poultice and the dirt.

It was a silent tending, and Kenshin flinched more than once as puss was pressed out of inflamed spots and herbal remedy packed in. The monk moved to the other hand and performed the same ritual, then he unerringly found the gunshots wounds and cleaned and changed their dressings. He'd been there, Kenshin thought, hazily, when Sano had tried to help him with the removal of cold, wet clothing.

"They must be painful, these wounds." The monk finally broke his silence. Kenshin had almost forgotten he was there, comfortable in the aftermath of the monk's tender care.

"Humh," he agreed, slitting his eyes open.

"Yet you travel with them, to the point of exhaustion."

"Pain can be ignored. Exhaustion - -" he shrugged, half smiling. " - - that is not so easy to avoid."

"Flesh will knit if you let it. You have a great reservoir of will that sustains you - - " the monk smiled sagely and laid fingertips to Kenshin's chest. "- - You radiate with it. Such strength requires great discipline."

Kenshin watched the monk warily. The monk turned his head and looked away, gazing blindly into the shadows, silent as monks tended to be.

"What temple is this?" Kenshin was not uncomfortable with long silences, he preferred them, truth be told, over aimless chatter, but something about the quiet in this place disturbed him. So he asked the question he'd asked Sano and hoped for a better answer.

"An old one."

Hardly more informative than Sano.

"Ahhh," he said slowly. "What township or village is closest?"

"Kuroiso is a day's walk to the north."

Kenshin tried to wrap his sluggish mind around that. To put that distance in perspective to where they might be on the road. He'd walked this road before, he ought to recall a temple.

"People would come from Kuroiso and Otawara and even Yaita province to this temple. We had powerful benefactors - -"

"And then the revolution and the new Meiji government, who had little tolerance for Zen Buddhism when they wanted Shinto as the new state religion." Kenshin finished for him when the monk trailed off.

The monk's mouth twitched a little in a smile. "Little tolerance at all.

Kenshin chewed at his lip, half remembering tales of a Buddhist temple that had blithely ignored the warning of a fledgling Meiji government, its monks serene in their isolation from worldly things, confident in their state of nirvana - -

\- - those first few years after the revolution had been violent and ripe with strife with the changing of the Tokugawa to the Meiji.

"Not long after the Tokugawa had fallen, there was a temple," Kenshin said softly. "That gave safe harbor to the family of a Tokugawa lord."

"I remember the story," the monk said softly.

"They were betrayed by a monk of their own order to the Meiji forces and retribution was sought."

"Yes. That too."

"Is this that temple?"

The monk inclined his bald head.

Kenshin felt a little dash of cold unease whisper through him. A little stab of malice that bled in from the very air. The monk looked up, frowning, as if he too felt the same thing.

"You came here - - to this temple - - afterwards?" One had to hope such was the case. He was not prone to believing in old wives tales and ghost stories. He was not Sano - -

Sano found the kitchen on his own. It wasn't much of a kitchen, but what did a body really expect of a bunch of monks who didn't eat most of the decent foods in the world because they were afraid they'd pollute their flesh or because if the food tasted too good, then they were being indulgent and you couldn't damn well have that.

Sano liked indulgence. He loved good food. He had no problem wallowing in earthly pleasures. He'd give a great deal for a good bottle of sake right about now. A nice long drunk would be nice. Maybe he could even get Kenshin hammered and get him to let up on his frantic chase after Kaoru for a little bit. Not that Sano wanted him to loose the trail - - well what trail there was after so many days - - and it wasn't like it was just Kaoru involved, there was a kid - - but hated to see Kenshin run himself into the ground in the process. Kaoru, twit that she was, wasn't incapable of taking care for herself. It was just that the enemies they'd usually had to deal with back before Kenshin had gone all domestic, had been the Battousai's enemies and a normal girl - - even a girl who was a master of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu - - well, it was hard to stand up to those sorts of men. Sano was rightly worried for her, he was worried for a kid he'd never met, but mostly he was worried that Kenshin would kill himself before he had the chance to do anything about it.

Sano got the fire started in a hearth that looked as cold as death and used his own pot to boil rice. He sucked at it, of course. It stuck to the bottom of the pan and scorched, and what was edible on top had that smoky flavor and was gooey to boot. He put a portion in a little wooden bowl to take to Kenshin and ate the rest of what was edible himself, sitting cross legged by the hearth, staring out the open doorway at the rain. It was well into evening now and the rain showed itself as the occasional silver streak in the darkness. He found an old lantern, its sides long since torn out by time or rodents, but the wick still there and a little bit of wax. The light guided him back through the shadowy temple with his offering of burnt, soggy rice. Kenshin was half asleep when he reached the little room. He'd put himself in a corner, with his back to the wall, his head resting on arms crossed atop updrawn knees. He was dressed in his own clothing, which couldn't have been completely dry after only a handful of hours here. He stirred when Sano walked in with the flickering light.

"We should leave here," he said softly, as soon as Sano crossed the thresh hold.

"What? It's the middle of the night." Sano was not so quiet in his reply. Kenshin winced, eyes shadowed in the dark.

"Why?" Sano demanded, when Kenshin didn't answer immediately.

"We shouldn't be here."

"What'd the monks tell you that?" Sano clenched his fists, damned and determined to hunt that bastard Hideki down and teach him some manners.

"Not - - in so many words." Kenshin looked stricken, a little wide eyed when he lifted his head to look up at Sano. "Its just a feeling. There's no rest in this place. Not for us."

"Well that's just fucking great. You wanna tromp back out in the rain because you've got a bad feeling? In a Buddhist temple?" He really did have the urge to grab hold of Kenshin's gi and shake sense into him.

"Sano - - can't you feel it?" It was an earnest question. Sano narrowed his eyes at it suspiciously.

"Feel what?"

"Cold. The air is cold and it goes beyond mountain air."

"Yeah, well - - fall's coming early."

"There were deaths here Sano. Wrongful deaths - - they don't want us here."

Sano stood there, blinking - - quite suddenly feeling the cool air on his skin. Quite suddenly imagining a presence behind him that was unseen and unheard. Kenshin's talk of unjust deaths and ill-will made the hair on the back of his arms stand up.

"Oh for shit's sake, what are you saying? You saying this place is haunted? You saying the monks here are living with the ghosts of the murdered?"

"No." Kenshin pushed himself up with a soft grunt and stood there with his back against the wall, looking serious and no little bit hesitant.

"Then what?" Sano yelled, flinging his arms out. The flame flickered, the rice went tumbling out of the bowl.

"Sano, you have blood on your robe."

Sano looked down and gaped at the smear on the front of the borrowed robe. It wasn't old blood, it was new and he recalled with vivid clarity wiping his hand on the spot to rid it of seeping rainwater.

"Fuck," he cried and fumbled with the belt, wanting out of the thing and back into his own clothes, damp or not.

Kenshin averted his eyes a little at Sano's nudity, not that anything impressive was showing, what with the cold that he now acutely felt and the apprehension that Kenshin had begun. He tied his belt around his loose pants and shrugged on his jacket.

"There's blood on the wall there, as well." Kenshin pointed out, and Sano saw well enough a very old, browned splatter of blood against the wall.

He felt himself pale. Felt the blood drain from his face. He had a healthy belief in ghosts and ghostly things. And the ghosts of murdered spirits were the worst of all. He recalled the flash of the sword that he'd seen from the corner of his eye - - what he'd thought might have been a trick of the light or a bit of reflected lightening - - perhaps it wasn't after all. Perhaps it had been the reincarnation of a murder.

"You're saying this place is haunted?" He demanded, loud in his upset over the possibility.

"I didn't say that - - exactly." Kenshin tried to worm his way out of the fact that he'd proposed just that. "I just said that there was bad karma here and we ought to go."

"Nonononono, that is not what you were getting at. Don't even try and tell me that is not what you were getting at. The walls were bleeding. Do you understand? And I saw this monk in the rain and it was like he was floating and I swear I could see the forest through him - - " He was certain that he had, now that he thought about it.

"Sano, please calm down." Kenshin had his hands up, trying to placate.

Sano shook a finger at him. "You calm down!"

"I am calm, Sano."

Sano glared.

Kenshin sighed, gently brushing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. "I just think that something very bad happened here and that it is no good place to spend the night. Places can be - - ominous - - without being haunted."

"You're lying." Sano could hear it in his voice. That patient attempt to alleviate Sano's fears. "You suck at lying."

"I'm not."

"_Yes,_ you are. You think there are ghosts and you're just not saying because you think I'll get upset. Do you think I'm a girl or something to jump at bumps in the night?"

"No - -"

"Do you think I'm scared of ghosts?"

"Sano - - you're shouting."

"All right. All right." Sano swept up his sack and waved a hand at the door, inviting Kenshin to use it before him. "You wanted to go out into the rain. That's fine. I'll go. But not because I'm scared of ghosts. Understand?"

Kenshin pushed himself off from the wall, stood there a moment, breathing, trying to get his balance or his strength. He inclined his head, not willing to argue over what Sano was afraid of and what he was not.

"Where'd that one monk - - Tokaji, go?"

"He left."

"Yeah? What'd he say about ghosts?"

"He - - said nothing on the subject."

"You didn't ask?"

"I'd asked other things."

"What things?"

Kenshin paused, one hand gingerly on the wall, and looked up at Sano with that narrow, serious look he sometimes got. "There was a massacre here, not long after the revolution. I heard stories. The monks hid the family of a Tokugawa lord and were betrayed in their efforts. When the government forces came - - there was little mercy shown. It was a bad time. There was little leniency shown for those that did not bend to the new government. It should not have happened. They were only monks and women and children."

"Aghhh - - murdered monks and children. And women. Women make the worst ghosts. They're vengeful by nature anyway."

Kenshin lifted a dubious brow, opened his mouth to disabuse Sano of such a notion - - then tensed, gaze swinging ahead of them into the shadow by the mouth of the hall leading to the main shrine. There was a figure there. A robed, bald figure that melded with the dark. There was a stain of red that coated the side of his head, that seeped down into his robes. The monk stared at them for a heartbeat and then moved away - - well glided away at any rate and in no mortal direction but right into the wooden wall, passing through it like smoke through netting.

Sano let out a startled yelp. A very undignified yelp that he couldn't rightly help.

"Sano," Kenshin said, sounding strained. "You're hurting me."

A body had to blush. A body had to pry his fingers off Kenshin's shoulders and pretend he had not grabbed a wounded man and placed him quite squarely before himself and the bloody ghost of a murdered monk. It was embarrassing.

"Go go go." He shoved Kenshin, not ungently, to get him moving, wanting out of this place so bad now he could taste the urgency.

"Sano - -" Kenshin swung around, hauling Sano off his balance, yanking him back as the dim glimmer of a sword flashed before them. But not at them. All he saw through the shadow was the shade of a faceless figure bringing a sword down in quick, precise movements, the blade biting into the soft stomach of an unarmed monk. Blood spattered. The monk fell and faded into obscurity. The attacker was gone before he was.

Sano swore, seeing flickering echoes of other atrocities in the darkness of the shrine. Seeing the destruction that he'd thought he'd glimpsed when he'd first come here out of the rain.

You promised. You promised to spare us. The monk Hideki moaned from the floor, staring up through eyes black as pitch at some unseen entity. His scream echoed off the walls, even as thunder rattled the walls and made the floor shake. Sano half screamed with him, startled beyond his ability to stop it by the thunder and the sudden white flash of lightening outside the hanging door.

He caught Kenshin's arm and practically hurled them through that portal and out into rain that was a damned welcome change from the musty unease of the temple.

They huddled under a thick tree afterwards, after a hectic race down the unkempt path from the temple, Sano trying to get his nerves under control, pretending he'd not been utterly terrified by the goings on up at the temple. It was one thing to face a flesh and blood enemy, no matter how insurmountable that enemy might seem and quite, quite another to stand face to face with a ghostly one. Sano shivered and tried to stop it, for shoulder to shoulder as they were, Kenshin was sure to feel it and it was important not to seem the coward or the fool in front of him.

"It wasn't just me - -" he had to ask, sniffling as water dripped off the point of his nose. "Was it? You saw too, right?"

"I saw," Kenshin said after a moment, very quiet, very subdued, not much showing of his face but hair and mouth and chin.

"You okay?" Sano canted his head to get a better look at Kenshin's face in the dark. Kenshin looked up, a weary smile on his lips, his eyes echoing that, large and regretful almost.

"I'm okay, Sano."

"You don't think that guy Tokaji was a ghost, do you? I mean I touched him. He felt real. I drank tea he made." Chilling thought, that. Consuming a thing made by ghostly hands.

"I don't know. There was no malice in him either way."

Sano pulled his knees up close to his chest, cold and wet and trying not to shake in the after effects of fear.

"Either way? Either way? Oh, that's just perfect. Just fucking perfect - -"

Chapter Nine

They didn't talk about the incident at the temple all during the miserable walk to Kuroiso. Sano was too agitated about the whole thing, casting wary looks over his shoulder now and then as if he expected vengeful ghosts to come wailing down the road at them - - and Kenshin was just too tired to exert the energy. Too tired to do anything but place one foot doggedly in front of the other, his arms wrapped about his ribs inside the relative soggy warmth of the gi, his thigh aching like someone had stuffed hot coals into the wound and his head throbbing from what he was sure was a dangerously high fever.

He had to ignore such things. As long as he could walk - - he would walk. As long as he could keep the goal in mind, he had to focus on it. It worried him when his thoughts drifted. When he'd come back to himself in a completely different section of the road and have no notion of how they'd come to be there, or how long it had taken to get there. He'd come back to awareness sometimes with Sano's hand on his arm and Sano's strength shoring him up as he staggered. Sano would grouse about his stubbornness sometimes, calling him unflattering names - -saying rightly that Kaoru would hardly appreciate being rescued if it killed Kenshin the process - - and sometimes he wouldn't say a thing. He'd just stare down from under drooping wet hair, his dark eyes worried, his long mouth set in grim lines.

They had to stop when the rain became torrential. They found shelter in the forest in the form of an old woodcutters lean to that leaked rain horribly, but provided three sides of buffer against the wind driven water. How Sano had found it in the dark was beyond Kenshin, but he was grateful for it. More grateful than he would have liked to admit to sit down against the wall and just shut his eyes and shiver from cold and wet and illness.

"Kenshin?"

He didn't lift his head to acknowledge Sano's dripping presence.

"We don't have anything left to eat." Sano said that like it was a pronouncement of death.

"We'll reach Kuroiso tonight," he murmured.

"No," Sano disagreed. "We'll reach it tomorrow. You're done for the evening."

Kenshin tightened his lips, not prepared to waste his breath in argument.

"Don't give me that look," Sano complained, settling down next to him. "And people used to say I had no sense of self-preservation."

He sat there a moment, cracking his knuckles in nervousness, silently staring out at the rain drenched night.

"You think - - we're cursed?" he asked finally. "For staying in that place?"

Kenshin sighed and drew his knees up closer to his chest, leaning forward in abject misery. "I don't know, Sano. I don't think the dead have any power to curse the living. I hope not," he finished softly and Sano swung his gaze about to stare at him.

"Yeah, " Sano finally said. "I guess that'd suck for you, huh?"

Kenshin didn't answer. A body didn't like to dwell on the possibility of the ghosts of murdered people lingering near the place of their demise, much less coming back to haunt the one who'd killed them. Not a comforting thought at all, which was perhaps why he'd never held much to superstition in the past. Easier to deny the possibility than worry over the prospect.

"It's going to be a bad winter," Kenshin predicted softly. Were his teeth chattering? He clenched his jaw to prevent them.

"Yeah," Sano agreed. He leaned closer, a hand hovering on Kenshin's back - - pulled away a little, then sighed and wrapped a long arm about Kenshin and pulled him close to his warmth.

"If I pull the blanket out, it's just gonna get soaked and then we'll have wet blanket over wet clothes over wet - - um, skin," he murmured, embarrassed at his act of charity.

Kenshin pressed his face against the damp heat of Sano's shoulder and nodded mutely. Sano wrapped his other arm around and shifted a little to accommodate Kenshin's weight against him. It was easy enough to lean there and let Sano situate them.

"I'm gonna get it anyway," Sano said softly, and withdrew one warm arm and dug in the sack for the blanket, got it draped over them in their pitiful little corner of the lean-to. It was almost pleasant, in a drowsy, dream-like sort of way, with the blanket tented over him and encased against Sano's body heat, with Sano's chin on his head and the weight of Sano's arms about his torso. He forgot to tell Sano not to sleep unless he woke him first, but then thought that it hardly mattered, for no bandit with a grain of sense would be out prowling in this weather.

He drifted out and back in again. It was gray instead of black, and the rain had reduced itself to a fine mist. Sano was snoring. Kenshin could feel the quiet rumble of it, his face pressed against the warm, smooth skin of Sano's chest. He'd ended up between Sano's knees at some point, draped against the length of Sano's body. Sano must have been having - - ah, interesting - - dreams for the rigid proof of such pressed into Kenshin's hip rather insistently. Disconcerted, he began to disentangle himself, but Sano's arms tightened around him and Sano's mouth twitched up in a smile and he mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like - -_ it'll be okay, just put your hand on it _\- - He shifted his hips a little and pressed himself more firmly against Kenshin's hip.

Kenshin blushed. There was no easy way to extricate himself from this without embarrassment.

"Sano," he hissed softly. "Wake up."

"Hummmm," Sano smiled lazily and slitted his eyes. Looked down at Kenshin and sighed, before shutting his eyes again. "It's too early. Go back to sleep."

"Sano!" Kenshin got an elbow between them and used it to lever himself up. Kenshin's weight centered about that bony protrusion in the middle of his chest, got Sano's conscious attention. He grunted and blinked up, annoyed.

"What are you doing, Damnit?" That came out as a growl, not nearly so pleasant as a half-asleep Sano.

"Trying to get up, Sano," Kenshin answered politely. He was still in intimate contact with Sano's morning erection and propriety dictated that he put a bit of distance between it and himself.

Sano blinked some more, took account of himself and his condition and how firmly he was trying to press said condition into Kenshin. Sano hissed through his teeth and shoved Kenshin backwards. Hard. Kenshin hit the ground, bad shoulder first and lay there blinking stars out of his vision. One would never think rain soaked ground could be so hard.

Finally a hand inserted itself into his line of vision and above that a disgruntled Sano. Kenshin warily lifted one of his own, thinking that if Sano gripped his injured hand with the same thoughtless force he'd used in disentangling them - - then he was very likely going to have to break down and scream. But to ignore the gesture of apology - - for that was most certainly what it was, put forth in Sano's own particular manner - - was unthinkable.

Sano reached past his hand to grasp his forearm and hauled him up. Steadied him on his feet thereafter and looked him critically in the eye.

"Sometimes I get testy if you wake me up too fast," he explained, a very faint stain of blush on his cheeks.

"Is that what you call it?" Kenshin bit the corner of his lip to keep from smiling.

"Shut up." Sano went to shake out the blanket and stuff it back into his sack. "We have nothing for breakfast, you know? Maybe we can catch something - -"

"I don't think I'm up to catching anything, Sano. And if I remember correctly - - ah, you were never that good at woodcraft."

He wished he hadn't said that the moment Sano's eyes got round and his chest swelled as if he'd been dealt a mortal insult.

"What do you mean by that? No good at woodcraft? I'm perfectly good at it. How do you think I survived all those years in the mainland? You think I'm inept."

Kenshin rather thought that Sano had spent a great deal of time carousing and gambling and drifting from village to village to beg, borrow or steal his meals rather than hunting them down in untamed wilderness. But one could hardly say that, and not expect physical retaliation and physical retaliation at the moment would only end up with him in more discomfort than he already was.

"I didn't mean it that way, Sano."

"What way did you mean it, then?"

"Ah, it's probably not that long a walk to Kuroiso. They've teahouses and taverns and vendors of all sorts that will sell food. Perhaps even a beef pot restaurant."

"Beefpot?" Sano's attention was snared in a direction other than injured pride. "A beefpot would be really, really good. You know, I half came back to Japan because I missed an honest to goodness beefpot. No decent Japanese cooking on the mainland."

And so went the conversation, guided by the rumbling of Sano's empty stomach. It was past mid-day when they reached the outskirts of the town. Even in the rain, farmers were out in their fields. The closer they got to the town, which was a fair sized community, if Kenshin remembered correctly from the last time - - oh years ago - - that he'd passed through it, the more small farmhouses cropped up.

Kuroiso itself was bustling with activity. There seemed an inordinate amount of people in the muddy streets. An unusual number of carts laden with goods left at a standstill in the light rain.

"What's going on?" Sano put a hand on a man hurrying past. "Why so many people hanging around town?"

"The rain's flooded the bridge," the man said. "The road north is blocked until the waters go down."

"Well, how long will that be?" Sano demanded, glaring at the little man as if it were fault of his. The man flinched, looking from Sano's bristling self to Kenshin's drooping one.

"A day or two if the weather doesn't get worse. It usually floods off and on this time of year." The man backed a step away, and when Sano barked no more questions at him, turned and continued on the way he'd been heading.

Sano turned questioning eyes to Kenshin, who stood there, mud spattered and soaked to the bone, exhausted and hurting and silently cursing the weather that prevented him from continuing on along that road despite all that.

"So what do you want to do?" Sano asked.

"The choices are limited. There are bridges down river - - but they're as likely flooded or washed out as this one. We'd waste less time, I think, waiting here for the waters to drop. And - - and perhaps a day of rest would do me good." He hated saying it. It felt like betrayal, the decision to dally here - - the decision not to keep moving, even if it were futile, on the trail of Kaoru and Kenji. It was his body's weakness that was letting them down as much as anything. His own stupidity in underestimating Winter's duplicity. He'd allowed himself to grow soft, body and mind and now look where it had gotten them all.

"Kenshin?"

"Humm?" He blinked up at Sano.

"We need something to eat.'

"I don't have any money, Sano."

Sano shrugged, not particularly dismayed, craning his long neck to scope out what he could of the town. There was a speculative sparkle in his dark eyes, a slight twitching of his mouth.

"And a place to stay," Sano added, distracted.

"I don't have any money," Kenshin repeated. He had, before the bandits. Not much, but Kaoru had a stash at the dojo that he'd raided before setting out. It was in some bandit's pocket now.

"Let's go and find an inn." Sano started off down the narrow street and Kenshin had very little choice, other than standing in the center of said street, but to follow.

There were perhaps, five inns in Kuroiso, and the majority were full from people stranded by the river. The last one, a quaint ryokan, had a room recently vacated by a merchant who'd decided to sell his goods in Kuroiso rather than take them further north. Kenshin leaned against the wall by the door and let Sano bargain with the hostess over the price of a room. How Sano managed to talk her into letting them the room without payment in advance was beyond Kenshin. Maybe Sano had gotten wilier in the years he'd been gone. Maybe the hostess merely liked the way he smiled at her, with that cocky, self-assured grin of his and his off-handed attempts at flirtation. Whatever he did, he had her blushing and giggling a little, casting him speculative looks from under her lashes.

They placed their muddy sandals among a row of others and followed her down a long, dimly lit passageway. It was an old inn, everything made of wood, straw and paper. The floors creaked under their weight. She led them to a small room, the only furniture being a low table bearing an empty tear pot and a tin of tea. There were folded futons against the wall and worn tatami mats on the floor.

"Baths?" she asked and Kenshin thought that after falling desperately into deep sleep, that a bath would be a most wonderful thing. But, he supposed it would only be proper to wash the mud and dirt of the road off, before lying down on the inn's clean sleeping mats.

"Please." He inclined his head, expecting Sano to do the same.

"Just a second," Sano smiled at the hostess once more, before catching Kenshin's arm and pulling him aside.

"Listen, you go and do the bath thing, I'm gonna go out for a little while and see if I can't make this grow." He dug in his pocket and held up a lonely little coin.

"You have money."

"Well, not a lot and you don't have to say it like that. Like it's a miracle or something."

Kenshin glanced back at the hostess, who waited patiently by the sliding door. "Is that all you have? It's not enough for the room."

"I know that. I'm gonna go find a game - - dice maybe."

"Sano - - you've little enough. Will you squander it?"

"I said, I was going to make it grow," Sano growled, offended.

"And when you lose the first roll, then you'll have nothing."

"You harp like a woman - -"

Kenshin sighed. "We ought not separate. I'll go."

"Oh no. _Hell_ no."

Kenshin blinked at him.

"I don't want you anywhere near me when I'm gambling. You're this magnet for bad luck right now. It's like bad spirits are dogging your heels. You'll jinx me."

One had to be offended by that. But Sano was oblivious and Sano was eager to be on his way to squander his meager reserves. He could hardly be stopped if he was set on the goal. So Kenshin let him go without further argument - - he _did not_, nor had he ever harped like a woman - - and followed the hostess down stairs to the steaming baths.

It was a very nice bath and he was alone there and he sat drowsing in the hot water after he'd rinsed himself of mud and dirt and let his mind drift as it might. He lamented the unknown. Not knowing where Kaoru and Kenji were. Not knowing if they were hurt. Sano said Kaoru could take care for herself better than Kenshin gave her credit for and he supposed that was true. He supposed she was no submissive prisoner and wished Winter the full extent of her temper. He wished he'd listened better when Winter had taunted him in the bandit's camp. Wished he could recall all the things the man had said, instead of only an uncertain few. Very little had been clear after they'd tied him to the beams and driven the stakes through his hands.

Winter had said, he thought, that he wouldn't hurt them. Had said there was no reason for him to. Why believe that when everything else from the man's mouth had been a blatant lie? Perhaps because at the time he'd said it, he'd had no reason to alleviate Kenshin's fears. No reason to lie anymore once he'd had what he wanted, which was Kaoru in his power and Kenshin at his mercy.

Why? Why bother? The man had killed a woman that he'd needed. A woman who knew a smattering of English. So he'd taken Kaoru to use in her stead. Why? Trade? Something about trade rights? Something about a past bargain that he placed the failure of at Kenshin's feet. A sunken ship, a dead business partner. Kenshin recalled bits and pieces of that accusation, but they were interspersed with bright slashes of pain and of the feel of Winter's hands on his body.

He shuddered, the ghosting echo of other hands on his flesh making his breath catch in his throat - - but those memories were all dark shrouded and uncertain. Just as well push them away and lock the door on them.

The floorboards outside the bath creaked with someone's approach and he took a breath, lifting a bandaged hand to wipe damp hair out of his eyes. It was only one of the inn's boys, who came with towels and a soft, clean robe and asked if there were anything else he needed.

"Bandages?" Kenshin asked and the boy looked at his hands and shoulder with curious eyes before nodding. Time to get out anyway, before he drifted asleep in the water and drowned. He dried himself and slipped on the house robe, gathered his filthy clothes and went back to the room. The hostess met him outside the door with a roll of clean cloth bandages and a small jar of some sort of herbal ointment.

"I'll have these cleaned for you." She reached for his clothing and he almost didn't give it to her, guilty that they hadn't the money to pay for the room, much less other services. But she didn't wait for his assent, merely exchanged the bandages for his gi and hakama and gracefully disappeared down the hall.

In the privacy of the small room, he divested himself of water soaked bandages, and sat on the unrolled futon and examined what he could of his wounds. His thigh was healing nicely, the flesh a healthy color. He dabbed a bit of ointment around both entry and exit wounds and wound clean bandages around his leg. His shoulder was harder to rebandage, so he decided to leave it be for the time being and let Sano help with it when he got back. He'd put off looking too closely at his hands, but finally sighed and rested them on his knees, turning them over to access the healing wounds. The flesh was knitting. It itched horribly and his fingers felt tight and graceless. But there seemed no loss of feeling, and they all moved, albeit with stiffness and pain, when he needed them to. Forming a fist was an impossibility. He hoped as they healed he'd regain dexterity. He hoped that he'd be able to grip a sword. He'd seen men with palms pierced by sword blades or arrows that had regained full use of their hands. Not quickly, but eventually. One had to be optimistic.

He wrapped his hands, and had to tuck the bandages in under themselves, not being able to tie them off by himself. One more thing for Sano to do when he returned. Despite minor irritations, one had to appreciate Sano's presence. Though Kenshin had walked many a hard road alone, and truth be told, preferred solitude when the road was dangerous and filled with pitfalls - - he had very seldom walked those paths as sorely injured and unarmed as he was now. Sano was - - a comfort. Sano was strength when his own was failing him - - and that was an unfamiliar feeling at best. An uneasy one, that reliance on another person.

He settled down, adjusting the small, bean filled pillow and the blankets that he'd unfolded with the futon and lay there in the dim light of a single flickering candle, letting the weariness seep back over him, letting his body relax muscle by muscle, ache by ache until even the candle became indistinct. Knowing he was stranded here at least for the night, made it easier to relent to the demands of his body. Made it easier to shut his eyes and let much needed sleep fall over him.

Sano had said Kenshin was bad luck. That ill-omen's dogged his footsteps - - well, maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe he was good luck after all. Maybe that luck just wasn't so much interested in Kenshin's well-being as the well-being of those around him.

Sano had won at dice. Repeatedly. He hadn't had such a string of good fortune for - - oh, years. Years and years. Maybe it was the fact that most of the men gathered in the back rooms of inns and taverns gaming were hayseed farmers or pot bellied merchants with nothing better to do, stuck here as Sano and Kenshin were stuck here, but to while away their time losing money at games of chance. None of them, most surely, were the seasoned gamblers that Sano liked to consider himself.

Oh, and he'd taken their money. He had a full pouch of it now in his pocket and a belly full of sake and beer consumed during an evening roaming from one tavern to the next looking for a new game. Damn, but the spirits must have been smiling at him - - must have been sorry for landing him in the midst of a pit of ghosts and were making it up in the best possible way. He cackled his delight out loud in the middle of the street, and passerby looked at him oddly, like he was a madman staggering through their midst. He hardly cared, so delighted was he.

He got to the inn and smiled beatifically at the hostess, asking if she wouldn't mind having supper prepared. A great deal of supper. He ticked off his wants one finger at a time, and her eyes got wider as his list grew. He paid her for it in advance, plus extra coins for the room. Might as well get it out of the way in case his luck did decide to run out and he lost what he'd gained. He was not unrealistic and was well aware of how fickle fate could be, despite Kenshin alluding that he was the worst sort of fool. Squander the money indeed. He'd show Kenshin what he knew.

Of course, Kenshin wasn't awake so he could gloat when Sano reached the room, despite the floors creaking like the inn was about to fall down. A damned heavy sleeper for a man who'd lived the life Kenshin had - - but a body had to suppose it was more fever and injury that made him sleep the sleep of the dead rather than simple lassitude. He'd probably dropped off not long after Sano had left - - though from the look of him, he'd taken the time to use the bathes the hostess had offered. Clean hair, clean bandages, clean house robe.

"Hey?" Sano whispered, feeling remiss in disturbing Kenshin from much needed sleep. But he supposed decent food was a good enough excuse. A body needed to eat as much as sleep if it ever wanted to regain full strength. Kenshin didn't stir from his soft query though, so Sano sank down with his knees on the edge of Kenshin's futon and reached out to touch his shoulder. He hesitated, the gap in the robe revealing a breadth of pale skin and the bruised edges of the unbandaged bullet wound in Kenshin's shoulder. The bandage on the one visible hand atop the light blanket was coming unraveled.

That bothered Sano, the sloppily wound bandage. Made his palms itch a little in annoyance for some reason he couldn't name. Made him want to pound a few heads for causing the wound that caused Kenshin to have to fumble with a dressing that he couldn't properly tie off on his own. Somebody needed to pay.

On impulse - - maybe to see if the fever was still there, maybe - - maybe because the candle light cast the fading bruise on Kenshin's cheek in a strange color - - he reached out and touched the side of his face. Grazed a thumb over the bruise in question like he might hesitantly and unwillingly touch an offered infant. Light as a feather and afraid he'd break it.

Only Kenshin turned his face into the touch and sighed, warm skin against Sano's palm, lips murmuring a name. Not Kaoru's name - - but _Sano's,_ and for a moment, Sano thought he'd woken up and caught him, and froze in the act - - but Kenshin's long lashes remained fixed over his pale cheeks.

He should have pulled his hand away. Should have had the sense to back off because a man just didn't sit there, stunned by the fact that another man had murmured his name in sleep - - or by the feel of another man's skin under his palm, or the silky brush of another man's hair against the back of his hand. Of course Kenshin called his name - - they were traveling together, after all. Natural. Nothing to it at all. Nothing to make his thoughts stall or his muscles freeze. Nothing to make a sudden wellspring of guilt rush up within him. But it did and he couldn't pin point why, other than the fact that he ought to be pulling back and he wasn't. That he damn sure ought not be letting his thumb drift over to graze the contour of Kenshin's bottom lip.

Kenshin shifted again, and the lashes trembled this time. Sano jerked his hand back as Kenshin's eyes opened, a little hazy, a little befuddled, not evidencing much of those cat-like reflexes he exhibited when he was in somewhat better form.

"What's wrong?" The violet eyes narrowed and the brows drew down and Sano figured he must have looked appalled, sitting there with his hand clutching at his chest like he'd just been scalded.

Damned if he'd admit what he'd been about, so he forced a smug smile and reached for his full purse and jingled it.

"Nothing's wrong. I won big time, is what. You owe me an apology."

Kenshin blinked, staring beyond Sano as if he expected something to spring up in the shadows, then back and down to the little leather drawstring pouch in his hand.

"You won?"

"Don't say it like it's never happened before," Sano said dryly. "You just have no faith, is all. C'mon, get up, I've got supper being fixed."

Kenshin sighed, lifting a hand to brush hair out of his face and hesitating at the unwinding bandages. An almost apologetic smile crossed his lips. "I couldn't tie it off very well."

"Yeah." Sano agreed and thought,_ he needs your help, so don't just sit there like a lump,_ but damned if he could work up the nerve to touch Kenshin again when the first time had just been - - wrong. He didn't even want to think about what had been going through his mind.

"Sano?"

"Huh?"

"Will you fix this for me?" Kenshin asked very patiently, like he was talking to a child or a drunk. Well, maybe Sano was a little drunk. Maybe all that beer and sake was to blame for any eccentricity. It was a good excuse. It was a comfortable one.

"Sure." He reached for Kenshin's hand, straightened the wrappings on first the one, then the other and tied them off. Nice and snug and clean. He got Kenshin up and stood there gawking like a fool at the loose way the borrowed house robe hung open, until Kenshin straightened it up, pulled it properly closed and tightened the sash. If Kenshin noticed, he didn't make an issue of it, he just catfooted across the tatami mats and out into the hall, not making a fraction of the sound that Sano did.

"How long were you gone?"

Sano calculated in his head. "I dunno. Five or six hours. Its full dark out there now."

The inn had a pleasantly proficient cook. It was a good meal and Sano left it stuffed and happy and blissfully hazy over his earlier discomfort. He was sure it was the alcohol. Absolutely certain. Kenshin would probably even laugh about it and agree if he admitted it to him.

If - - if pigs flew and Buddha showed up dressed like a geisha and offered varied acts of sexual depravity.

So Sano shut his mouth about it and finished off the rest of the sake he'd bought with dinner and let the buzz accompany him to sleep.

He woke up very late the next day, alone in the room, all tangled in blankets and clothing, head a pounding swollen thing at the end of his neck.

Why, oh why did he ever drink? He moaned about that for a while, nauseous and miserable and not particularly concerned with anything else. If Kenshin was up and about on his own, that was great - - Sano couldn't care less at the moment where he was or what he was up to.

Kenshin crept back in not long after, a soft rustle of clothes and the barely perceptible pad of bare feet on tatami mats. Sano didn't bother to remove his arm from his eyes.

"Sano?" Kenshin finally had to break the silence that Sano was perfectly happy with.

He didn't answer right away, so Kenshin shifted a little closer and laid fingertips to Sano's arm, urging it away from his no doubt blood-shot eyes. Sano blinked up unhappily. Kenshin looked awake and relatively well, with his hair caught at the back of his neck and his gi and hakama clean and wrinkle free.

"How much money do you have left, Sano?"

"Why?" Sano asked suspiciously.

"There is a railroad station in the next town. If we had enough for tickets, the train could take us to Sendai in a day. It would take many days on foot."

"Trains - -" Sano moaned and moved his arm back over his face. Ships he could take, even steam ships - - trains he had never held much fondness for. Still - - - "I dunno. Enough probably. Is the bridge clear, yet?"

Kenshin sighed, picking at the edge of his sleeve absently, looking distinctly unhappy. "Almost. They think part of it was washed out. We may have to go downstream after all."

"We gonna wait and see - - or head out?" He silently wished for the former, moved his arm of his own violation after a moment of silence and peered up at Kenshin.

Kenshin shrugged, and murmured unwillingly. "Wait and see - - for a little while. This evening - - the water should be low enough to tell for sure."

"Okay. Fine. Maybe I can win some more money by then."

"Sano - -" Kenshin frowned, distressed and wary. "- -please don't lose the money we'll need for the train."

"What makes you think I would?" Sano barked and regretted it as the sound of his own voice reverberated inside his head. He winced and curled onto his side. "Argghhh. Remind me not to mix sake and beer again, will you?"

"I'll remind you, but you'll do it anyway."

By the time Sano's hangover had faded and he was ready to get up and search out food, Kenshin had dosed off again. Sano contemplated rousing him to accompany him, but decided against it. Kenshin needed every minute of sleep he could get.

Sano picked up lunch from a street vendor and wondered down to the river to see how bad the bridge was. There were a fair number of other curious folks as well, and there were constables keeping people away from it.

"You'll know when we know." Was the practiced reply as frustrated travelers were sent on their way, though it looked to Sano as if the center portion of the stone bridge had been washed away.

Great. He made his way back into town, thinking about finding a game of dice to pass the time - - then feeling the sting of guilt over the prospect of _not _winning and losing the money he had and having to go back and tell Kenshin. He sighed miserably, and stalked back to the inn, a victim of his own conscience.

He took advantage of the bathes that he'd foregone yesterday and flirted with the pretty hostess afterwards, just to make himself feel better after the awkward thoughts he'd been entertaining about Kenshin. She eventually had to return to her duties, which left Sano bereft of purpose. He could have gone out looking for - - well a body hesitated to say '_trouble'_ \- - but it fit well enough considering his mood and the boredom that the afternoon had brought with it, but getting in a tavern brawl here might get him thrown into jail, which would irritate the hell out of Kenshin and throw them seriously off schedule.

Nothing to do but slouch back to the room and lay down on the futon with his hands behind his head and contemplate how completely bizarre this trip home had turned out to be. And he'd thought what he'd get was a nice welcome from old friends, a string of long nights where he got to share all his tales of the mainland, his adventures, his close-calls, his overall conquest over the exotic and the foreign. He hadn't even had his beefpot yet.

All he'd gotten was a half-dead Kenshin on a mission. A damned and determined Kenshin who only periodically delved into moments of reason and rational over this pursuit of Kaoru and her child. _Their_ child. Funny, thinking of Kenshin as a father. Not that he wasn't disgustingly good with kids - - kids loved him. It was just - - well, it was Kenshin. It was liking contemplating himself with a kid on his coattails. Scary thought. Sobering one.

Sano rolled onto his side and stared across the arm's length of distance between them at Kenshin's profile. Straight, fine nose, long, dark lashes resting upon high, delicate cheeks. Slender jaw and sharp chin - - generous lips, that could pull you in with that smile of his, or just as soon thin out in dead earnestness and make a body take a step backwards in consideration of self-preservation.

Damn, but he was pretty and the worst thing about this nice, clean dry room, was that two bodies didn't have to press together in the night for warmth. Sano sighed miserably in admitting it. Hated himself for admitting it. It wasn't bad enough that it was a man he was having such thoughts about, it was a married man with a kid.

Ah, but he was the worst sort of lecher. And the only thing worse than a lecher was a bored lecher, who had nothing better to do than lay there imagining things in his mind, now that he'd admitted the worst and cursing himself for each twisted image. He wondered if Kenshin might have been open to - - certain things, back before he'd decided to fixate himself on Kaoru - - back when things had been simpler and he'd just been a temporary guest at Kamiya dojo instead of a permanent fixture. There had been times - - now that Sano thought about it - - that it might have seemed that way. It made a man wonder about Kenshin - - pretty as he was - - and what alliances he might have made in those long years after the revolution. It made a man wonder what advances men might have made towards a sixteen year old Kenshin, freshly split from Hiko Seijuurou, and new to the cause.

It managed to piss him off, all those considerations. It was irritating enough - - yes, damned irritating, that Kaoru had managed to drag him into matrimony, much less any number of faceless lovers from the past. He tightened his fists and ground his teeth and thought maybe going out and initiating a good bar brawl might be just the thing he needed.

"What are you scowling at, Sano?"

Kenshin was blinking at him, eye's heavy lidded and still clouded with sleep.

"Nothing. Shut up. It's your fault."

Kenshin blinked again, baffled. "Sano, have you been drinking again?"

"Shut up!" Sano pushed himself up, angry and flustered and - - oh, damn damn damn - - aroused enough that his erection made a right impressive tent out of his pants. He brought his leg up and glared down at the traitorous thing, thankful that it was dim enough in the room that Kenshin might not have noticed.

"Sano - - did you lose the money." Kenshin pushed himself up.

"No, I didn't lose the fucking money!"

"Then what - -" Kenshin's eyes lost some of that large, half asleep bewilderment. "- - is the matter with you?" Sano supposed Kenshin could only take being yelled, cursed and bitched at so much before he got pissed off himself.

"You wanna make something of it?" Sano snarled and wished, oh just wished Kenshin would, because wouldn't it be nice to get rid of his frustrations upon the person who'd caused them?

Kenshin stared. Opened his mouth and shut it, then shook his head.

"No."

Sano sagged. Diffused. Just like that. Soft voice. No anger. Nothing to get his back up even more than it already was.

"Forget it," he said. "I was drinking and I'm just a damned mess, is all."

"Its okay," Kenshin assured him, getting his legs under him and rising.

"You think?" Sano canted him a look, a little more collected now that the throbbing in his pants had gone down.

Kenshin didn't have an answer to that. Kenshin was a little wary of Sano's psychosis, but he smiled anyway and suggested they walk down to the river.

"I think part of its washed away," Sano said, anything to get his mind back on track.

"Humm. We'll see I suppose. Its about a day's walk down stream to the next village with a bridge."

Sano figured he might as well stuff his belongings into the sack, just in case Kenshin decided he wanted to make that walk now, before darkness fully hit. Down to the river then, and through the people and carts parked about the mouth of the bridge. The two constables guarding it were bickering with a merchant and his wife and their cart laden with bags of produce. The wife's shrill voice was enough to make a man wince. The constables were sufficiently distracted as a result.

The river was still dangerously high, its water choppy and brown with debris washed down from upstream. But the bridge was no longer submerged. It was wet and littered with bits of rubbish, but whole, for the first forty yards. Then there was nothing but a span of empty space over the swift moving current. A section of bridge, some twenty feet in width had been washed away. There was nothing left but the two stone pylons on which it had been supported.

"Well, I guess we walk downriver." Sano sighed, shifting the sack on his shoulder.

Kenshin stood there, staring across the water. "Its not that far."

"What, the next bridge?"

"To the other side of this one."

Sano laughed, then realized that Kenshin wasn't kidding. "Are you out of your mind? This is not a happy river. Fall in and it won't let you back up."

"It's not that far. There's the pylon half way."

"Oh, for fuck's sake - - Kenshin - - you serious?"

Kenshin slanted a look up at him. "A full day to the bridge A day back to the main road - - that's two day's worth of travel. I can make it across. Can you?"

"Does it matter?" Sano snapped sourly.

Kenshin winced a little at that. "Yes."

There were shouts of a sudden from the mouth of the bridge. The constables had taken notice of them and were yelling for them to get off the bridge.

"Sano, can you?"

Sano swore and swung the sack off his shoulder. "If you can do it with that leg - - then I sure as hell can."

Kenshin didn't even nod agreement to that boast, just turned, took one deceptively simple step and launched himself off the jagged edge of the bridge. He landed like a cat on the pylon ten foot out in the midst of the choppy river, and leapt from that with hardly a pause, making reaching the other side seem painfully simple.

_If I drown,_ Sano thought sourly, _I'm gonna come back and haunt you, Kenshin._ He tossed the sack with a mighty swing, not waiting to see if it reached the other side, backed up a half dozen paces and ran at the edge, hurling himself off and into the air. Reached the mid-point with room to spare, and jumped for the other side before he could think about breaching a similar distance without room to build up speed. He almost didn't make the other side. One toe hit the edge of the bridge and the other one floundered in water. He wind milled his arms, losing balance and Kenshin clutched at his jacket yanking him forward. He scraped his shin on the rough edge badly, but it was better than falling into the river, and lay in a tangle of limbs atop of Kenshin afterwards, breathing hard, counting his blessings and thanking whatever good spirits were watching over him.

"Sano - - your elbow - -" Kenshin shoved at him to get him to roll over. He did with a gusty sigh, bending his knee and drawing up his leg to see his shin.

"You get my pack?"

"I got it."

"Good. Look, I'm bleeding."

"I'm sorry." Kenshin peered at his leg, then across the bridge at the constables who were shaking helpless, frustrated fists at them. "I think we ruined their day."

"Yeah, they look pissed. But, I'm seriously doubting anybody else is gonna take this route."

"Probably not." Kenshin got up first, rubbing the side of his hand over the wound in his thigh. "We can walk until its full dark, then reach Shirokawa tomorrow. I'm told trains stop there every day, so we should be able to get a ride and maybe even reach Sendai by the day after."

"Yeah, sounds like a plan." He didn't ask what they were going to do once they reached Sendai. Didn't inquire what path Kenshin planned to take if his quarry was long gone with Kaoru in tow.

Hope and determination had kept Kenshin going so far. No reason to dash it now. Hell, Kenshin was probably already prepared for the worst. Kenshin was enough of a realist - - had seen enough of the brutal side of life - - to realize that the odds of them catching this Englishman, were not in his favor.

Sano got up, dusted his hands off on the sides of his pants and held out a hand, indicating the trail forward.

"All right then, if we're almost there, then lets get started."

Chapter Ten

The weather held all the long walk to Shirakawa. It was a luxury one hesitated to voice thanks for in fear that the fates would notice their laxness and send the dark clouds again and the rain and the cold winds. It might have been a peaceful walk, Sano lost in his own thoughts and broodingly silent because of it. The road was well maintained and easy to navigate, the land green and bountiful after so much rain, all of nature getting in one last burst of vitality before winter sucked the color and the life from the world.

They saw the railroad tracks before they saw the town, cutting in from the west. Even with no train in sight, Kenshin could still smell the faint clinging odor of smoke and grease and machine oils. It was painfully apparent that a beast of no natural origin prowled this strip of land.

It didn't bother him so much. He didn't take to the onrush of technology as eagerly as Kaoru, but he realized it was nothing to be feared. He realized with a certain fatalism that the empire had purposefully kept itself separate from the advances of the rest of the world for too many years, and now that the barriers had been breached that there was no stopping the change. A man would be a fool to fight against it. It was inevitable. Like the tides. Like the rains and the change of seasons - - like death.

He frowned, not knowing why he'd thought that last. Why his musings had suddenly turned dark and dismal when he'd been content with the morning before. Perhaps it was the ache in his shoulder and the constant itch under the bandages around his hands. Or maybe Sano's mood was catching - - and Sano's dark silences and dark sometimes glances in Kenshin's direction. Foolish to ask what was bothering him. Sano was generally quite vocal about his aggravations - - but when he wasn't, when he kept his lips pressed tight and his hands stuffed into his pockets and his eyes on the road - - well the annoyance went deeper. You didn't ask, then. You didn't pry and you didn't try to offer help, because more than likely you'd get your fingers bitten off for the charity.

Maybe - - maybe Sano wasn't so different from himself, in that respect, Kenshin thought. At least that's what he'd been told. It was hard to see yourself during such times, the way others saw you.

When they reached Shirakawa, Sano's mood improved. There was food to be had and people to bicker with. Kenshin went to the railway station to inquire about tickets to Sendai while Sano roamed the bustling market. Kenshin found him shoveling noodles into his mouth at a soup maker's stall.

"You get the tickets?" Sano sucked a long dangling noodle through his lips.

"Yes. The train gets into Shirakawa in a few hours and leaves an hour after that. We should be in Sendai by tonight."

"Great. We'll have time to look around a while, then."

That was a daunting prospect. Dogging Sano's heels while he roamed a strange town could be exhausting at the best of times. Perhaps, he might bribe Sano into inactivity with the suggestion of finding a restaurant and sitting down to a proper lunch. A very long, drawn out proper lunch, in which he could take the weight off his leg and sit down and let hot green tea soothe the very slight roughness in the back of his throat.

Sano was convinced. Sano was never one to turn down the prospect of food and they found a nice restaurant and settled down in a walled off booth with a very young, very pretty waitress who made eyes at the both of them and giggled behind her hand when Sano flirted back more vocally. Sano was obviously pleased with the meal and the girl, for his mood improved drastically and he slid closer to Kenshin, leaning shoulder to shoulder to remark, once the girl had gone, that she reminded him of a little working girl he'd met in Chungking on the mainland. Went even further, after his fourth or fifth glass of sake, to admit to having left quite a string of adoring females behind in his travels. Funny, Kenshin thought, that the number of them he'd had here before he'd left on his pilgrimage, had been drastically less. As handsome as he was - - and Sano _was _attractive with his lanky frame and his angular face and his sharp, dark eyes - - he'd tended to irritate women more than attract them in Kenshin's opinion. He fought verbal battles with the bold ones and scared the timid ones with very few exceptions in between. One had to assume that either Sano had changed a great deal in the last four years, or that the women on the mainland were of an entirely different breed than the one's here, or that Sano was making entirely too much use of his imagination.

Kenshin did not remark on his suppositions. He was not stupid and Sano had that vaguely brash look in his eyes that was just waiting for something to light the fuse that would launch him into mayhem. Kenshin was in no mood to get caught up in a brawl, so coddling Sano seemed the best path for safely getting the both of them on the train when it arrived, instead of the alternative of the two of them ending up in a jail cell for destruction of property and person. So one agreed to Sano's outrageous claims and asked for the appropriate details when it was seemly and sounded politely awed when Sano seemed to need recognition of his deeds. It was very much like dealing with Kenji on a particularly sulky day. He doubted Sano would appreciate the comparison, but his lips twitched contemplating the reaction regardless.

They heard the whistle of the approaching train from the restaurant and Kenshin urged Sano to pay the bill from his dwindling supply of coin so that they could go to the station and meet it.

Sano was agreeable enough, after a large lunch and a good deal of sake. He draped an arm over Kenshin's shoulder when they emerged into sunlight and grinned up in appreciation over the fair weather.

"What a day. Doesn't it just figure that as soon as we decide not to walk - - the sun comes out and stays?"

"It fits with my luck of late," Kenshin agreed wryly.

They walked to the station, which was bustling with activity now that the train had pulled in to a stop. The great metal beast sat there, huffing in agitation, steam and smoke seeping from the engine, while the creatures that rode within its belly passed to and fro, loading luggage and freight and people. The passenger car was filled to overflowing, with not just human beings, but crates of chickens, a few goats, a handful of pigs on rope leashes and a barking dog or two held in rein by children. Kenshin had bought the cheapest tickets available, which put them in the common car, squeezed in amongst the farmers and their produce; the poor families and their worldly belongings; the workers on their way to or from some other town along the railway. There were close set wooden benches upon which people and animals crowded. Above those were wooden platforms on which children perched amidst luggage and crates of livestock bound for some northern market.

Sano found an empty niche and claimed it, then bullied his way a few more inches across the bench, forcing the other occupants to cram up against each other in order to make room for Kenshin by the window. Sano got curses and complaints, which he ignored - - Kenshin got pressed between him and the window, which he supposed, was better than standing, holding on to the rope hand rails hanging from the roof of the box car.

Soon the whistle blew again and the cars jerked into motion as the engine began clattering down the track. Between crowded humans and animals, the smell was overwhelming, even with the windows down. It was a blessing to sit in a window seat where a body could lean his head close to the fresh air. The motion and the heat and the smell made Kenshin wish he'd not partaken of such a large lunch.

He dozed fitfully, but it was an unrestful, queasy sort of sleep. Came to once with a goat's nose in his crotch and glared unappreciatively at Sano for laughing at him. The old man across the aisle, from whom the goat had escaped, ambled over and reclaimed the curious animal.

He looked out the window for a while after that, at the fast passing landscape. At neat fields, lush and green from the rains, at growths of forest and lush patches of bamboo. He drifted off again and this time it was a deeper sleep which the noises in the box car and the constant clatter of the train did not penetrate.

It was only the shrill call of the whistle that made him stir. He'd sagged against Sano, one of Sano's long arms draped over his shoulder, Sano's head dropping to his chest, half resting against the top of Kenshin's. It was dark outside, the afternoon having slipped away while he slept. He leaned across Sano and inquired of the peasant woman sitting next to him what stop they were approaching.

"Sendai," she said and he blinked, amazed that he'd slept through the stops in-between.

He nudged Sano awake and Sano yawned and stretched his long arms out over his head, remarking how empty his stomach was. No great surprise there. Sano's stomach was always empty and it protested most vehemently directly after Sano woke from slumber.

People were up and about even before the train shuddered to a stop, eager to escape the confines of the common car. Sano and Kenshin stepped off the train and into Sendai station amidst the crowd of animals, luggage and people. It was a clear night. The air was cool and smelled faintly of sea air if you could get past the stink of the train. Sano declared an immediate need to empty his bladder and they found a public facility within the railway station to elevate the need.

"So - - can we go find something to eat first?" Sano asked and Kenshin shook his head, refusing to deviate from his goal now that he'd gotten so close. Everything was narrowed down to tracking Winter and finding Kaoru and Kenji. Winter had said he was on his way to meet a ship. To find ships, one had to go to the docks. He'd only been in Sendai once, many years past, but he knew the direction in which the ocean lay.

One had only to walk east.

It wasn't hard to find the shipyards. Once they'd walked a few dozen blocks, the smell led the way. Though Sendai was a thriving trade port, it was also had huge fishing industry and the odor was pungent and strong on the westerly wind.

Sano picked up a few smoked fish from a vendor to eat as they walked. Past the neat rows of houses and shops of the inner city, and the structures became more eclectic - - warehouses hastily erected, shops and business fronts that hinted at western influences to cater to the growing western clientele that passed through this city as ships stopped at port. There were a good many foreign faces on the dock streets. A good many sailors from foreign ships that roamed the portside, frequenting taverns that sold western foods and drinks and catered to western tastes.

"So what are we looking for?" Sano asked, tossing away the remains of his impromptu dinner and stuffing one hand in his pocket. Even after dark the docks were bustling. The tides dictated life here at port and ships were coming and going with them both day and night.

Kenshin had been mostly silent on the walk from the train station, his eyes narrowed in concentration, his mouth set in a tight, serious line. With that look on his face - - well, a wise man wouldn't give him any grief.

"Information." Kenshin finally gave him an answer, his eyes flickering down this pier and the next, looking for likely informants.

They stopped a few honest Japanese dockworkers and asked about what English ships were been in dock recently - - what one's had been here and gone recently. They got varying answers. Got directed to this dock or that, to this man or another to ask for more details. They spent an hour gathering rumors from their countrymen, before they began venturing onto the piers where foreign ships were moored. Some of the foreign sailors knew Japanese, some not. Most knew very little of any ship but the one they'd sailed in on.

Sano began to get frustrated by the second hour. It was a huge port and the amount of help they were getting was minimal at best. Men were reluctant to talk to strangers approaching them on the dock. The foreigners were either suspicious or insulting. Sano wanted to smash his fist into smart mouthed, foreign faces more than once. Kenshin stopped him with a look, with a slight motion of his hand, with a warning 'Sano', not wanting to antagonize the people who might have a clue regarding the ship they were looking for.

"So what do you need to know about good English ships for?" one burly, aggressive dockhand demanded, when they walked down the cargo laden pier beside a gently rocking English frigate. They were unloading goods, and perhaps a half dozen sweaty, dirty English ship hands worked on the pier. The majority of them paused in their work as Sano and Kenshin poised their question to the one that professed to speak Japanese.

"A man named Quinton Winter left Tokyo with something that wasn't his. He was to meet a ship here. He was English, like you."

"What, you think he was a thief just because he wasn't a dirty Japanese?"

Sano blinked, gaping at the sweaty, dirt smeared sailor that dared to utter those words. The joints of his knuckles cracked he clenched them so hard and Kenshin subtly slid in front of him, putting a shoulder between him and the obnoxious sailor.

"No. I think nothing he did not admit himself," Kenshin said calmly, smoothly. "I would just like to know if you have heard of such a man, - - he claims to have been a merchant for many years - -"

The sailor snorted, glancing back to his cronies. "Even if I had, you think I'd tell you - -?" As if thieving, kidnapping Englishmen had to stick together. Sano ground his teeth together, having taken about as much dismissal, rudeness and disappointment as he could for one night.

"You know something you damn well better tell us!" he stepped around Kenshin, wrapping a fist in the shirt of the offending seaman. "It was a damned simple question."

"You better get your hands off me, monkey-boy," the man growled. He was about a four inches taller than Sano and had a good twenty-five pounds on him. He could have cared less.

"You answer the question, you dirty, round eyed pig."

"Sano! Back off." Kenshin had the sharp tone of command to his voice. His fingers on Sano's arm were surprisingly painful, considering the wound in his hand.

"Yeah," the sailor laughed. "Listen to your girlfriend, slant-eyed puke."

"Why you - -"

Kenshin's fingers on his arm tightened. "No, Sanosuke. That's not what we're here for."

"The hell - -"

"Bosses you about like a little wife would." The sailor laughed and the few of his comrades that understood enough Japanese to catch the gist of the exchange chortled as well. "Bet he goes down on you like a girl would, too, huh?" He said more offensive things. More blatantly insulting things in blatantly crude detail that made Sano see red around the edges of his vision. Kenshin might have removed his fingers - - or not. It hardly mattered anymore whether Kenshin wanted him to behave and take the insult or not. He threw the first punch. There was so much rage behind it that it lacked a great deal in finesse, but nothing in power. The sailor slammed backwards, blood gysering from his nose, crashing into a stack of crates and scattering his fellows. They rushed forward, crying out things in their unintelligible tongue and Sano lunged forward to meet them.

It felt good, breaking the skin of his knuckles against their faces. They were big, but lumbering and graceless, relying more on brute strength than finesse - - very much like he'd used to be - - like he still might have been if circumstance and ego hadn't urged him to better himself. It wasn't hard to avoid their attacks, and the ones that were unavoidable, he had learned ways to block that didn't involve cracked ribs, bloody noses or loosened teeth.

He didn't know what Kenshin was doing, hadn't the time or wherewithal to pay him much heed, honestly, but certainly he wasn't engaging in this melee. A body could hope he wasn't, at least, considering his too recent wounds, but a body had to make assumptions when the boat hook flashing at his head and the meaty arm swinging it suddenly went down for no apparent reason - - at least not one Sano noted upon his brief glance that way. A body had to pay more heed to the business at hand.

The big one he'd first knocked down came back at him, bloody mouthed and with a wicked, fish-gutting knife in hand - - breathing hard and promising a nasty death with his beady, round-eyes.

He swung the blade and Sano jumped back, almost getting a slice across the arm. The man swung again and wildly and Sano rushed in, catching the man's elbow, forcing it up and driving a hard punch into the man's ribs with his other hand. The breath left his opponent in a heady rush and he caught the wrist with the knife, bending the hand backwards, twisting the thumb so hard that the man cried out, loosing his grip on the hilt of the knife. He sank to his knees, having little choice in the matter, with the angle Sano had his hand turned - - his curses were imaginative and foul. Sano's grin was humorless and wide as he glared down.

There was a thump from behind him and he glanced over his shoulder, to see the last of them falling on his face, a narrow box blade clattering from limp fingers. Kenshin stood behind him, scowling - - and the glare was all for Sano - - pissed then and not fairly, considering who had started this. It wasn't Sano who'd begun flinging insults and innuendo - - it wasn't Sano who'd born the brunt of those innuendoes. Kenshin ought to be damned pleased that Sano had bloodied the bastard's nasty mouth.

"What?" Sano snapped, offended, increasing pressure on the sailor's hand in irritation. The man yelped, wrist bones threatening to give. There was the sound of commotion from the ship. Faces gathering at the railing to see what mayhem was going on below.

"He asked you a question," Sano growled at the sailor. "Answer it."

"I don't fucking know - -" the man gasped. "Give me the name of a ship - - maybe I could tell you something - -"

"We don't know the name of the ship. That's what we want to find out, idiot?"

"Whad'ya want me to say, then? I don't know any Englishman named Winter."

Sano snarled and gave the man's wrist a final wrench before releasing him and stepping quickly back. There were seamen coming down the gangplank to the aid of their fellows.

"We need to go," Kenshin said.

No argument there.

They melted into the night dark docks, amidst flickering lantern light and shuffling late shift workers. There was the distant whistle of police whistles and one could only assume they'd been summoned by the brawl. Sano had no wish to spend time in a Sendai jail cell and he had the notion that the more foreign sailors they harassed, there was more likely hood of that condition happening. But he was game if Kenshin was. Despite the blood trickling down his knuckles and the ache in his hip where he'd staggered back into the sharp edge of a crate - - he was hyped and ready for more. Kenshin wasn't talking though. Kenshin was padding down the docks, simmering and narrow eyed and it pissed Sano off to no ends thinking it was directed at him.

"It wasn't my fault," he snapped, catching Kenshin's arm.

"I didn't say it was."

"Yeah - - well, what're you so pissed off about, then?"

Kenshin extracted his arm from Sano's grip and stood there in the middle of a worn, pitted street, with a raucous tavern on one side of them and the stench of a moored fishing vessel on the other.

"He didn't come here blaring his arrival for all to see and hear. He came here silently and no matter how much we ask - - we won't hear rumor of him from the people on these docks."

Sano took a breath, staring over Kenshin's head at the bristly silhouettes of a dozen tall ships, all spindly masts and spider-web rigging and furled sails against the night sky. "So what do you want to do, then?"

"He came in the company of yakuza. He came in partnership with them. They'll know the things I need to know."

"Sooooo - - you want to hunt down the yakuza in Sendai?"

A nod. A damned serious, dangerous nod. Like Kenshin was up to tackling the no doubt thriving, no doubt wide-spread Sendai crime syndicate. Finding a few Tokyo yakuza in the midst of the Sendai bunch wouldn't be easy. Unless, the Sendai yakuza heads were in on it too. Unless the yakuza from Tokyo had done the proper thing and checked in with their Sendai brethren when they'd come - - just to avoid offense.

"Well - - if we're gonna do this - - start looking for yakuza hangouts - - and yakuza bosses - - then we need to do a little gambling."

"Sano - - we don't have time - -" Exasperation won out over the anger. That and a weary, shuddering sigh, and a half trembling hand that Kenshin ran through his hair.

"Wait, wait, wait. Don't _even_ give me that look - - you think the yakuza doesn't have its hands elbow deep in the gambling houses? You think there's a better place to scout out information than a room full of drunken, hard-core gamblers? You gonna just walk around asking where to find the local bad asses?"

Kenshin thought about that, chewed his lip solemnly while he mulled over the limited range of his possibilities. He might have been a damned efficient hitokiri, but he'd never used the underworld to go about it. Never played with the criminal elements. Hadn't had to, when his masters were the highborn lords who were backing the revolution. Sano had lived on the other side of that gulf. Sano _had_ trafficked with the dark side.

"_Trust_ me, Kenshin. We'll find the guys we're looking for this way."

"Okay." A short inclination of Kenshin's head. A capitulation that Sano grinned at and clamped a hand on Kenshin's shoulder for in good cheer. He had enough money left in his purse to buy into a few games. As long as his luck held, it might be able to last the night - - and well into the morning. The places he planned to go never closed - - and were always ready and willing to separate a man from his money.

It was well into dawn when they finished their last hand of dice, drank their last watered down beer and staggered out of the last den of chance in a series of such places that rumor and suggestion had taken them to throughout the course of the night and early morning.

Well, Sano staggered. Kenshin, who'd nursed only a handful of beers throughout the evening and then only not to seem out of place, had to get a shoulder under one of Sano's arms to keep him from weaving about the street like - - well, like very much what he was - - the worst sort of drunkard. The deluded sort, who hadn't a clue he was as far gone as he was, and was perfectly willing to go back for yet one more round. Of dice and drinks.

Kenshin had had enough. They had money left, thanks to him emptying half Sano's purse mid-way through the night when the drink had started to tell and Sano had begun to lose what little sense of self-preservation he'd had to begin with. The luck had been fickle. A few good rolls and then a few disastrous ones. Kenshin thought they'd left with a little less than what they'd come with.

Money-wise. Information-wise - - they'd come out considerably better off than what they'd started. They knew the location of several yakuza run operations. They knew that the yakuza in Sendai were very big into black market imports and exports. They knew the names of a few men rumored to head the Sendai syndicate and hints of where those men reined their underworld empire. He doubted Sano would remember much of it in the morning, but he had to admit, Sano did have a way - - a way that got mysteriously better the drunker he got - - of mixing socially with miscreants. He'd gotten men to talk and Kenshin had been there, quietly unobtrusive in the background to pick up every word.

Tomorrow he'd visit some of those rumored locations, but tonight - - tonight? - - _today _he'd had all he could take. Sano's weight on his good shoulder was almost enough to pull him down. He was close - - so close to finding out vital information - - and on the one hand, stopping for even a brief bit of rest would put him further behind Winter - - and on the other, better a few hours sleep than a few days if he plummeted back into relapse.

With the rising sun, came a misting rain. The dry spell was ended and he and Sano were half soaked by the time he found a dirt cheap inn with space to spare. Not much space. But what could be expected for the meager price they charged? A cube not much larger than the hole he'd woken up in in the widow Hatayama's cottage. A warped shelf on the wall for belongings and a tattered, thin futon rolled up against the wall. Sano sat slumped against the sliding door outside while Kenshin unrolled the mat. Kenshin had to shake him awake to get him out of the hall and into the sleeping space.

"Where are we?" Sano wanted to know, a little wild eyed at the rude awakening.

"We're at an inn, Sano." Kenshin patiently urged him to crawl inside and slid the door shut after him. There was a lantern down the hall that cast strange shadows through the paper panes in the door.

"At an inn - -? Where?"

"In Sendai."

". . . . . . . oh. Oh, yeah. I was right, wasn't I?"

"You were right."

Sano sighed and flopped down. "Told you. You never believe me. You think I'm this idiot, I know."

"I don't!" Kenshin insisted, aghast that Sano would think such a thing. He leaned over, staring down at the shadows where Sano's eyes ought to be, very much wanting to dispel that notion. "I never did."

Sano's hand shot up, surprisingly fast considering his state, and caught at a loose lock of Kenshin's hair that had escaped the band at his nape.

"You cut your hair. Why'd you cut your hair? It was so - - nice. Let it grow back, okay?"

A man had to blink at that. At Sano's fingers sliding behind his ear, through his hair and touching his scalp. He really had no more notion of how to deal with that than he might oxen flying out of the sky at him.

"S-Sano - -" Nothing came to mind to say.

"C'mere." Sano pulled him down, fingers caught in the hair where it was gathered above the band. "Is it raining again? Its cold and you're wet."

"Ummm - - yes. Yes, it's raining," he whispered it, lying very still on his back next to Sano.

Sano sighed, content with the both of them reclined on the mat. More content when he rolled to his side and pressed his chin against Kenshin's shoulder and his arm around his waist. His breathing turned soft and even then, the whisper of his breath warm against Kenshin's neck. He smelled of beer and smoke and some other, more unique scent that was solely Sanosuke.

The smell of it was - - pleasing. And it occurred to him that the fact that it was - - the fact that he noticed it at all - - made this uncomfortable little niche, all the more disquieting. Worse still, he hadn't even the room to distance himself. To move out from under Sano's long arm, and Sano's warm breath. It made no sense that after days and day and days of close sleeping quarters, he'd find issue with it now. Other than the fact that he could still feel the imprint of Sano's fingers on his skull and still feel the ghost of the chill bumps that had risen on his skin as a result.

It was silly. It was Sano after all and no threat to him.

A silly thing, born of exhaustion and discouragement and he didn't need the distraction. Most certainly he did not. What he needed was sleep, so that he could focus a few hours from now when he'd need his wits about him.

It became second nature to force sleep when the dangers of the road dictated that only a few precious hours of it might be granted at a time and then long stretches without. He shut his eyes, imagining calm and peace and still; slowing his breathing, decreasing his racing heart, relaxing against the warmth next to him, instead of tensing from irrational alarm.

It was just Sano after all. Sano didn't mean anything - -

The Oyabun's weekday 'office', so to speak, if the rumors they had heard were to be believed, occupied the floor above a brothel three streets inland from the ocean. The Sendai Oyabun, the father of the Sendai Yakuza was reportedly the son and heir of the very old, very respected, very feared former Oyabun. There were no rumors where his home where, which one expected, was how the Oyabun preferred it. Kenshin favored visiting him at the office, never having had a taste for invading a man's home with unpleasant business.

Sano, once the bulk of the hangover had seeped away, after what sounded like a painful emptying of his stomach into the ally behind the inn and two cups of herbal tea that an old vendor promised would relieve the most horrendous 'morning after head', had all sorts of crafty notions of how to go about infiltrating the headquarters of the Sendai Yakuza. One felt bad vocalizing to Sano, who was trying very hard, that stealth had never been his strong suit. If stealth had been what Kenshin was after, he'd have extracted himself from Sano's dead to the world embrace and gone alone.

As it was he listened to Sano's advice all the walk to the Oyabun's business office and then simply stopped on the street outside it and announced that 'no, the front door seemed the best way in.'

Sano gaped, all his notions of craftily passing the Oyabun's no doubt numerous guardians disassembled.

"Hello." Kenshin smiled without particular good nature at the painted face of the woman who greeted them at the door. It was not the most elite of brothels. The smell of opium drifted from the back rooms. The hostess was pretty enough but old before her time. "We're looking for the Oyabun. Mazawa Sozui, I believe."

The hostess blinked at him, not comprehending or shocked into speechlessness at the bluntness of his request.

"I can't believe you just asked it like that," Sano muttered behind him.

"There is no Mazawa Sozui here." The woman finally got her voice back, peering around the both of them to see if anyone else were lingering outside the door.

"Ah - - strange, considering we heard from several sources that his offices were on the top floor of this very building.

"You want a girl?" she asked. "We have girls who'll do whatever you want."

"We don't want girls," Sano snapped. "We want to talk with the Oyabun, Damnit!"

Sano was loud. The woman winced and stepped back a little. Sano moved around Kenshin, filling the room with his presence. "We'll look for ourselves."

"No." The woman put her hands out, not quite touching. "We don't want your business. Leave now!"

"You heard her." A man stepped out from behind a sliding door. A very large man, with a pock marked face and arms bigger around than Kenshin's thighs.

Sano grinned, finding something he could sink his teeth into. He stepped right up to a man that probably outweighed him half again and repeated Kenshin's demand.

"We came to see the Oyabun. We're not going away until we do."

The big man had a knife under his shirt and very likely another one strapped to his leg, from the way he carried himself. Sano could deal with a few simple knives. The ones behind the partially opened sliding door were another matter. There were two or three of them waiting there, and the smell of sake and smoke drifted out to mix with the heavy perfume of the hostess and the scent of opium smoke coming from the back of the brothel.

He slid around the center of conflict that had become Sano and the big man. Saw where the stairs led up at the end of a shadowed, door lined hall. The woman saw him and started, not having noted him moving at all, but she kept her silence, willing to let the Oyabun's guards deal with them.

Of course with Sano, it had to come to violence. The big man shoved first and Sano staggered back a step, then let loose with one of his own no-nonsense punches. He was quicker by far than he'd used to be and the blow landed solidly making the big man reel.

There was a rustling of movement from the room behind the sliding door. The faint smell of gunpowder, which meant one or more of the hidden one's had a gun. Kenshin disliked guns intensely. A man sidled through the crack in the door, a pistol in his hand. Kenshin shoved the sliding door panel closed with enough force to shatter the wood. The man and his gun went sprawling, the latter clattering to the floor boards, the former squawking and holding both hands to a broken nose and split lips.

The others cried out in anger and clamored over the broken door, spying Sano right away and mistakenly assuming him the only threat. The first one went down, tripping over Kenshin's foot, the second one to an elbow in the throat. The one he'd tripped, got a well placed kick to the side of the head which ended his threat. Sano finished his in short order and stood there looking for more, somewhat surprised at the collection of Kenshin's conquests.

"I thought you were supposed to be wounded?"

"I think the stairs are this way." Kenshin inclined his head to the hostess and padded down the hallway, past occupied rooms, some of which the sounds of grunts and moans issued forth from, some which the occupants had half opened the doors to, curious at the ruckus outside.

There were more bodies upstairs. He could hear them moving, More dangerous bodies than the ones in those rooms partaking of women and drugs. If they had too much time to prepare, they would be trouble. If they had more guns - - this would be messy and he truly hadn't wanted messy. He truly did not want Sano in the line of gunfire. Sano was quick, but he wasn't that quick. Ha - - he hardly knew if he was that quick anymore. Between four years of a generally sedentary life and the wounds he'd taken when that life had been interrupted - - he was most disastrously off his game.

It wasn't a man with a gun at the top of the stairs, but a pair of men with swords. They had the higher ground certainly, but they were in the dark as to what sort of threat they faced. Kenshin's foot touched the first step and he launched himself up, before they could fully realize what he was doing or just how quick he was doing it. Two bounds and he was just below their line of vision. He felt the strain of it in his leg. Felt it quite adamantly in his hand and he slammed his palm up under the closest one's guard and into his chin. Teeth clamped shut quite abruptly and blood spattered as the tongue was caught in the crushing impact. Kenshin caught his arm, even as the man started howling, and slammed the hilt of his sword into the other man's Adam's apple. He bashed the first one's head against the wall to quiet his noise and caught the sword as limp fingers dropped it. He didn't want it, this killing blade. It was too much of a risk to wield it and not take a life, accidentally or not. But the howls of the man who'd bitten through his tongue had roused others and Sano was pounding up the stairs in his wake and the Oyabun was sure to have the best of his guard on the upper level with him.

He made the choice, and snatched the sheath out of the unconscious man's belt, sliding the blade home within it. A sheathed sword could be a dangerous weapon in its own right, even if his grip was weak and it hurt to clench his fingers too tightly about the hilt.

"If they have guns - - stay _down_," he hissed at Sano.

"Me? What about you?" Sano complained, but Kenshin didn't answer, he swept down the narrow hall, cutting a swath through the men that came from the various rooms along the side. He used speed to take them down before they had the chance to rally - - before he had to exert physical energy and prowess that he was sorely lacking in at the moment. He left the dregs of them for Sano to clean up behind him, working his way towards the big room at the end of the hall. The door slid open before he reached it and slim, dark man stood there, a sheathed sword at his side, face expressionless. Not a hired thug. Not even a trained yakuza assassin. Better than that. A man who knew how to hold that sword and had quite likely used it professionally years past when the carrying of such a weapon was not frowned upon. Kenshin knew a swordsman when he saw one - - and this was most certainly a man that knew the art.

Not a good man to encounter when his own hands were screaming bloody murder at him and wetness was trickling down his wrist from the bandage of his right one, making the hilt of the sword slick under his fingers. He transferred the sword to his left hand, holding it lightly by the sheath. Held out his right hand to stop Sano from charging right past him and inclined his head respectfully at the swordsman at the door.

"We've come to speak to the Oyabun, if you please."

"Do you have an appointment?" the man asked, deadpan.

"An appointment?!" Sano cried and Kenshin wondered how much face he'd lose by turning around and kicking him to get him to shut up.

"No. It was an impromptu visit. I would like to see him all the same."

The swordsman looked beyond them, at the wreckage of the hall, at strewn bodies and shattered doors.

"Assassin's generally come through the back door."

"We're not assassins."

"Doi, let them pass." A voice from within instructed.

The swordsman, Doi frowned, but stepped aside regardless, gesturing for them to approach. The office, compared to the rest of the building was very tastefully decorated. A large room with a western style desk and a western style couch along one wall. The rest was traditional, from the fine tapestries on the wall, to the lovely geisha kneeling on a mat beside the desk, a tea service at her side. There were two men in the room besides the swordsman, Doi. One looked to be a secretary, who had a small desk of his own, and the other was a middle aged man in deceptively simple, silk clothing. He had a pair of western spectacles perched on his nose.

"Is there a reason you invade my office?" He asked smoothly.

"I find it more honorable than invading a man's home." Kenshin answered, just as smoothly. "And it was only an invasion because your men forced it to be so. We asked nicely."

"Ah. Your politeness is steeped in disregard."

Kenshin shrugged, silently willing Sano to have the sense to keep his mouth shut and let Kenshin deal with this. Sano seemed content with that course for the moment, standing just behind him to the left, his eyes on the swordsman still at the door.

"The Yakuza have given me little reason for regard. But, I've not dealt with an Oyabun, so perhaps I've gotten the wrong impression."

"Perhaps. Perhaps you confuse the Yakuza with the yakuza - - the organization with the outcast strays of society. We are businessmen. We are not thugs and common criminals."

"Common criminals - - no."

The Oyabun stared at him, at his bandaged hands and the sheathed sword they held. "What do you want?"

"Information."

"Information? You come here and destroy my property and kill my men and you want a favor."

"No man of yours is dead."

A brow arched, speculatively. This was not a generous man, Kenshin thought. Not a merciful one. This was a man who would crush weakness the moment it reared its head. Better not to show it.

"Killing your men would prove no point. Not when I wish a favor."

"What information?"

"An Englishman named Winter came to Sendai from Tokyo in the company of Yakuza, on business in which Yakuza had a hand. He was to meet a ship here. I need to know what ship and if it has already left port and if so - - its destination. I would speak with these Yakuza from Tokyo if you do not know - - for I'm sure they will."

"And what makes you think that I would give up those given my protection? The protection of the Oyabun is no small thing."

"No," Kenshin agreed. "I have no grudge against the Yakuza - - only the Englishman."

"And if this Englishman - - whoever he is - - is in alliance with the Yakuza?"

Kenshin lowered his lashes, hiding the glint of anger, hiding the flash of memory of Winter's face just before he'd pulled the trigger and put a bullet through Kenshin's shoulder, of those sibilant, hateful words half recalled through a haze of pain and desperation. Of Kaoru and Kenji in this man's grasp. He had no time for this. He had no patience. He looked up and let the cold, controlled force of his anger take life in his gaze.

"Then the Yakuza and I would be at odds, Oyabun."

Chapter Eleven

Sano didn't even see it coming. One moment Kenshin was verbally dancing with the Sendai Yakuza boss and the next, the swordsman by the door, the guy the Oyabun had called Doi, was springing towards Kenshin's back, his sword out of its sheath so fast Sano missed the draw entirely. It was the sort of speed only the really good swordsmen exhibited. The type Kenshin would use and surprise the hell out of you when you weren't expecting it. Maybe the Oyabun had given a signal - - maybe the guy was just fed up with Kenshin sparring with his master.

Whatever the cause, the stroke was a killing one and if it had come at Sano - - he'd have probably been bleeding his guts out on the floor before he even realized he'd been sliced open.

Kenshin spun and blocked it with the sheathed blade. Shoved backwards hard with both hands when the naked blade lodged in the wood of the sheath and forced the Doi guy back a few steps before the man yanked his sword free of Kenshin's sheath.

Thud, thud - - thump. Three successive swipes - - all blocked and the end of the sheath shattered, leaving the last foot of the blade naked. Kenshin hissed and flung the arm holding the blade out and the sheath went sailing like a missile towards Doi. It was unexpected enough to take the guy by surprise. The sheath hit him in the gut and hard. He gasped, staggering a step - - that cold professionalism on his face replaced by indignant anger. Like he thought tossing the sheath had been a dirty move or something - - like he hadn't come at Kenshin's back first.

Doi swept forward and naked steel met naked steel. Kenshin didn't have much a choice - - all his moral righteousness be damned when a man was trying to slice him up with a good sharp blade. The woman screamed and scrambled backwards, the little secretary did, the both of them huddling behind the Oyabun's desk while the Oyabun himself sat impassive - - waiting for the outcome.

Clang - - clang - - swoosh. Doi's sword met empty air as Kenshin leapt over the swing - - launched himself off the edge of the Oyabun's desk and into the air over Doi's head, coming down with the hilt of his sword against Doi's neck on the way down. The man staggered forward, almost turned in time bring his sword around and make a swipe at Kenshin before Kenshin's foot slammed into the small of his back and smashed him forward into the edge of the desk.

Then Kenshin stood there, with the tip of his blade poised at the back of Doi's neck, the steel just resting lightly upon the flesh, but not quite breaking it. He stared over the man's head and into the Oyabun's eyes.

"Have you given _him _your protection? Shall I finish this and see how much this protection of yours is truly worth?"

"_You - _\- you do not know who you toy with. The Yakuza has a reach longer than you know."

"I know. I asked a simple favor. You brought this upon yourself."

"Who are you?"

"It makes no difference."

"I know who you are - - I saw you - - in the revolution - -" Doi whispered, leaning against his master's desk. "They said you were dead - - years ago."

Kenshin tightened his lips, not willing to confirm this man's assumptions. But maybe threat of Battousai the manslayer was needed more now than the threat of a simple, unknown swordsman.

"Well, they were wrong," Sano said.

"Tell him," Doi said softly. "Tell him and get him out of here."

The Oyabun frowned, but it did appear he had some regard for his bodyguard.

"I know this Winter. The ship he left on is called the Blue Lady and it left this port two days past. To where I do not know. The Yakuza he came with may or may not still be in Sendai. You might try looking for them at the Terakado inn. If you kill them while they are under my protection or disrupt my business, I will hunt you both down and make you pay. If you linger in this city, I may do so regardless. Do we understand each other?"

Kenshin pulled the blade back and inclined his head. "We understand each other, Oyabun."

He didn't say more. Just spun on his heel and strode past Sano and down the hall past the few insensible bodies that still lay on the floor. Past the conscious ones who glared daggers at their passage and downstairs through the brothel to the fresh air of outside.

A block down the road and he pushed his way through the crowded street to the wall of a building, thrusting the sword he'd held concealed close to his body into Sano's hands, haunching his shoulders and drawing his own hands up close to his chest. The hilt of the sword was wet with blood. The bandages on Kenshin's right hand were soaked through with red. There were pain tears in his eyes that he could hold back no longer.

"Shit.," Sano said, dropping the sword and kicking it close to the wall in order to better see Kenshin's hand. "You idiot. Look what you did."

Kenshin was shaking - - the whole of his body was quivering, his knees threatening to spill him down the wall. Sano got an arm around him to shore him up, close against the wall in the shadow of a narrow alley, hoping like hell that the Oyabun hadn't sent men to pursue them.

He wanted them out of the street and far enough away from the brothel to put them out of easy striking range.

"Do you want to keep the sword?"

It took Kenshin a moment to answer. He shook his head. "No."

"Okay. C'mon, then."

Kenshin clutched at Sano's jacket, pressing his forehead hard against Sano's shoulder. "Two days - - two days - -"

As if they hadn't expected it. As if Kenshin thought this Englishman would hang around waiting for him - - but Kenshin had had hope, even though he'd known better and that was dashed now.

"Come on, _now!"_ Sano got a grip on Kenshin's arm and got him back onto the street, whether he was ready to go or not. Kenshin let himself be bullied into moving. Let Sano haul him along, paying little heed to where Sano was going.

Sano had plans. Definite plans. First off back to the crappy little inn they'd spent the morning in to get his sack and take care of Kenshin's hand. The repeated impact of sword against sword had done a damn good job of breaking open the scabs of a wound that had just begun to heal without the angry red of infection. He was amazed that Kenshin had been able to keep his grip at all. That Doi guy had been no inept swordsman.

Second, scope out this Terakado inn and see if it was some sort of set-up before they blundered in. Sniff around a little bit and test the weather - - Sano didn't trust the Yakuza much at all and impassive faced Yakuza bosses none at all. The Oyabun would have had the both of them murdered on the spot if he'd have been able to get away with it.

"Where are we going?" Kenshin asked finally, pulling his arm out of Sano's grasp.

"Back to the inn."

"No." Kenshin stopped dead in the street. "We don't have time."

"Your hand is bleeding again."

"They'll get word to them and they'll run," Kenshin said.

"What? The Yakuza from Tokyo? If they're where this guy said at all?"

Kenshin ignored him, gaze sweeping the street and fixing on a vendor in his stand along the side. "Do you know the Terakado inn?"

The man gave him a dubious look, as if he thought he were out of his head for asking, but he told him regardless and Sano stood there softly cursing all the while.

"You're disabusing me of the notion that you have any common sense whatsoever!" Sano complained when Kenshin started off again. "I'm supposed to be the hotheaded one!"

Kenshin wasn't paying him any attention. Sano ground his teeth and grabbed his arm again - - hard, jerking him to an abrupt halt. Kenshin came close to striking back - - Sano could see it in his eyes - - could feel the frustration and the panic and the rage in that shriveling plum glare.

"You walked out of that brothel by the grace of luck alone - - understand? You weren't up to that and you did it anyway and if you think you're gonna get lucky enough to do it again - - well, your luck hasn't been running that good and you know it."

"Sano - - don't - -"

"Don't what? Try and talk sense? You put on a good show, but that guy took everything you had - - you're bleeding! They're already two days ahead of us - - a few hours isn't going to make any difference."

"It is! Do you think the Oyabun will just sit there and forget about our visit? Do you think he'll not send word to those men and warn them we're coming?"

"No. I don't think that. But I think they'll be ready and willing to finish what they started back in the mountains and I think the Oyabun probably sent a runner out the moment we stepped out of his office and I think no matter how soon we get there they're gonna be expecting us - - so you damned well better be in better shape than you are now."

"Let go, Sano."

Sano swore and released him, swallowing the urge to smack him up against the side of the head for his stubbornness. "Fine. We'll go then. And if you fuck up and I get killed because of it - - well, you can damn sure expect my ghost to haunt you for the rest of your days."

Kenshin stopped, a half dozen paces ahead of him, shoulders stiff and angry. His expression must have been abysmal, for people in the street took one look and veered wide around him. Maybe that last had gotten through to him. Kenshin had always had the tendency to hold firm to guilts and responsibilities, misplaced or not. He took very serious issue of protecting the people around him whether they needed protecting or not. Whether he was capable of it or not.

Or maybe it wasn't that at all. Maybe those last few steps had driven home how much that little skirmish in the Oyabun's office had cost him. Maybe he was feeling the blood running down his fingers or the tearing of no where near healed bullet wounds. Maybe the hurt was getting though for a change - - maybe that and the devastation of actually knowing - - knowing for a fact that Kaoru had slipped beyond his present grasp - - had driven the stubborn refusal to acknowledge his own mortality out of him.

It didn't really matter. Sano got capitulation. He got a reluctant nod and very soft. "All right. We'll go and get your pack, first."

Sano tried not to revel in the small victory. Tried not to say any inflammatory thing such as '_now you're showing good sense.'_ Or ' _It's about time you started listening to me.'_ Though he thought them with fierce intensity. It was enough that Kenshin had agreed.

It was enough that he sat still long enough to Sano to unwind the blood soaked bandages around his right hand and rewrap it. Sano had become rather adept at bandaging in the last few weeks. Kenshin had split the scab that had formed over the wound in his palm and the blood staining the new bandages was a bright red.

"It hurt?" Sano asked, tying off the cloth. Kenshin gave him a narrow eyed look, not in the mood for trivial talk.

"I just ask," Sano said irritably. "Because your hand is shaking so bad. See?"

He released the hand in question and without his own big fingers to anchor it, there was a visible trembling. Kenshin's gaze grew darker and he curled his fingers, pulling the member close to his body.

"It's time to go now."

Sano sighed, figuring he'd gotten all the repose out of Kenshin that he was likely to. He got up, slinging the pack over his shoulder and waited for Kenshin to follow suit, figuring that once Kenshin was down, it wouldn't be so easy to get back up. But Kenshin surprised him, rising gracefully to his feet with hardly a grimace.

They followed the directions the vendor had given Kenshin in brooding silence. The part of town this inn was supposedly located in was not a nicer part of Sendai. They were as likely, Sano thought grimly, to be attacked by the restless, predatory youth lingering in groups at this alleyway or the doorway of that dilapidated structure as they were by Yakuza.

The brothels here made the one the Oyabun held his offices over seem like the most esteemed geisha house. There were women on the streets outside the houses beckoning men towards their dens. There were groups of men gambling on the sides of the street, or the sound of men cheering on fighting cocks within the depths of an alley. A woman screamed from somewhere down one of those dark alleys and both he and Kenshin tensed, but her shrill laughter followed and one could only assume it was a whore entertaining her patron. There were no westerners here, as had been evident in other parts of the city. They'd probably not last a handful of minutes before they had their throats slit by the angry denizens of the Sendai slums.

The Terakado inn apparently doubled as a gambling den as well as a brothel. It was a seedy, ill-repaired building with a peeling, hand painted sign next to its main entrance. The sound of raucous laughter could be heard from within and a great many bodies traversed in and out of its doors. A popular place then. A dangerous one. Sano had seen its like. Had frequented its like, but only when he'd been in the mood for a bit of risk. He'd have been damned watchful of his back if he'd have walked into such a place without the possibility of an ambush - - as it was - - well, he wished Kenshin had kept the sword. The threat of the Battousai - - whether he was presently declawed or not - - might have been a good thing to have on their side.

"Oh, this is just great," Sano complained as they lingered across the street from the inn. "Looks like half the thugs in Sendai make this place their hangout."

Kenshin stood in the shadow of a drooping overhang, frowning. "It does seem a popular place."

Sano snorted. "So you want me to maybe go in and take a look around. I don't stand out as much as you."

"No. I think maybe we'll watch from here for a while. See who comes and goes."

Ah, sanity. Sano planted his back against the wall, wishing he'd picked up something to eat on the way, not trusting the digestibility of the food prepared on this particular street.

The shadows lengthened. A few women of ill-repute wondered by with interesting propositions. A man slithered up inquiring in they wanted herbal entertainment. Kenshin's black glare chased him away. Out of all the comings and goings to and from that inn, Sano wondered if Kenshin recognized a face. Whether he'd gotten a good enough look at any of those Yakuza that he'd chased from Tokyo to recall features. Whether any of them had participated in what the bandits had done to him - - or whether they'd left before it had come down to rape. If they had, then Kenshin wouldn't have to worry about his precious vow not to kill - - because Sano would take care of it.

It was almost dusk before Kenshin decided to move. Sano had wondered down the street and back in that time, all within eyeshot of the inn. Conversed with the women on the street and a few of the loitering youth who took him for nothing more than a slightly older version of themselves. He knew very well how to exude the aura of the ruffian when it suited him.

Then back to Kenshin and his silent, patient surveillance of the inn. When Kenshin did see a face that struck a chord, he never tensed. Didn't say a word to acknowledge it until the man was safely inside the inn and Sano's attention had wondered. Then it was merely a quiet. _It's time to go now, Sano._ And he pushed himself off the wall and walked down the street past the inn and towards the alley that flanked it.

"What, we going in the back way?" Sano wanted to know.

"Yes," Kenshin said, stepping over a passed out drunk in the shadows. Kenshin's gaze went up to the row of windows lining the second floor and Sano figured he was contemplating an even less obvious entry than the back door. There wasn't much in the way of handhold to get up there and Sano wasn't sure if he could make that dubious climb. Which meant if Kenshin went up, he might have no choice but to go in through the door. There were a lot of crates out here, containers of trash and rotted food. The urine and vomit smell overpowered even that.

"I don't know if I can make it up that way," Sano hissed and Kenshin frowned. "Let's just go through the damned kitchen."

As he said it the door opened and someone staggered out, drunk and oblivious, and weaving his way down to the end of the alley to purge his stomach. Sano made a face and gestured at the door. "It doesn't look like they particularly care who comes and goes this way. If its a set-up, then we're gonna walk into it one way or another anyway."

It irked Kenshin, who still had the instincts of a hitokiri if not the values - - to just waltz in the public way when there were so many other unpublic one's available. Sano, who'd never had the impulses to skulk about like a thief in the night, didn't give him the chance to argue the point, striding for the door and entering the horribly unappetizing kitchen. There were a few men and women working inside, who only barely paused in their work to take note of Sano's appearance and Kenshin's more circumspect one behind him. The smell of seafood gone bad killed even Sano's appetite. There was a door at the end of the cluttered kitchen area which undoubtedly lead to the main room, where a great clamor of noise issued.

He turned to see how Kenshin wanted to play this game - - when out of the shadows of the box and crates on the inside of the kitchen door a fist shot out and slammed unerringly into the side of his head. He staggered into the embrace of a large form that stepped out of the darkness from the other side of the door, vision spinning and only half aware of the sudden startlement of the kitchen workers. Only half aware as his senses cleared and anger set it, that the blow that had sent him staggering into the kitchen had merely been to get him out of the way so that his attacker could get his hands on Kenshin. Not an easy task at the worst of times, Kenshin being slippery and tricky even when he was impaired and especially when he was on a mission. But as Sano got his wits about him and grappled with the big man that was trying to haul him backwards towards the door to the alley, he saw that Kenshin's attacker had an arm around his neck and one about his waist and had hauled him off his feet and was half way through the door with him and out into the shadows of dusk. Sano stopped playing nice then. He changed the force of his struggles quite suddenly, wanting out that door to where Kenshin had been taken and wanting it quick. The big man, who'd been trying to get him that direction anyway was suddenly taken off his balance, and Sano pushed him headlong through the door and sent the both of them crashing into the trash outside it.

Sano ended up on top, with a knee in his attacker's groin and a fist raised to smash into his broad, flat face.

"Sano - - wait." A hiss from Kenshin and he jerked his head up to search him out. There in the shadows, pressed against the wall with a tall, narrow figure in common workman's clothing, blocking him in.

"What the fuck - -?" Sano demanded and the man blocking Kenshin in shifted to look over his shoulder at Sano, dark, narrow eyes cold and business like and just damned deadly.

"Don't make more of a scene that you already have, Sagara."

"What? _What!?"_ Sano cried, squinting his eyes to peer through the shadows, the darkness hiding a great deal of the features but nothing of the hatefully smug, unfortunately familiar voice. He knew this man. It was not a man whom he'd particularly wanted to encounter again.

"Saitou - -" he hissed, scrambling off the man he'd knocked through the door, rightfully thinking Saitou Hajime the more dangerous opponent.

"What the fuck do you want?"

"I'm afraid I can't allow the two of you to go inside."

"What!? Why the hell not?"

"What business is it of yours?" Kenshin asked, softer, calmer, though his eyes were narrowed to almond shaped slits.

"It would disturb a delicate balance and you two have already stirred the waters in Sendai with your presence enough already. There is nothing in this inn that you need."

"Where do you get off telling us what to do?"

"Sano - -" Kenshin gave Sano a warning look and slid under Saitou's arm and out from against the wall where the taller man had pushed him. "Why?"

The last question had been directed at Saitou and the man whom the Meiji police force utilized as one of their top undercover agents - - the man who had once been a leader of the Shinsengumi - the man who still held the ghostly acronym ' the wolf of Miburo' cast his smile that was never truly a real smile at Kenshin, and inquired dryly.

"Doesn't Sagara have a price on his head? I think that warrant still stands - -"

Sano went a little pale. He clenched his fists having the very strong urge to break and run. Well, maybe take a swipe or two at Saitou before fleeing the long arm of the law.

"Saitou, don't change the subject," Kenshin warned. "There's a man or two in there that I need information from."

"That may be. But you're still not going in there."

"Why do you care?"

"Because if you do you'll be interfering with an operation that the police have been working at for months - - I would prefer if all that hard work not be scattered to the four winds just because you and this idiot want to bust a few heads."

"Idiot!?"

"Shut up, Sano," Kenshin snapped. Oh, Kenshin was not happy. Kenshin had come very close to something vitally important to him and Saitou appearing out of nowhere telling him he couldn't have it was not being taken well.

"You tell me why or I go in there anyway, whether you want it or not."

"Will you? Are you sure you're up to going through me, Himura?"

Kenshin's lip curled in a snarl. He glanced at Saitou's big lackey, at the open kitchen door - - at Sano, who nodded, affirming that he was up for anything Kenshin wished to try.

"Not here," Saitou said, abruptly digging in his pocket and coming out with a cigarette between his long fingers. "Come with me."

He struck a match against the wall and held the flickering flame to the end of the cigarette, then shook out the stick and tossed it into the alley along with the rest of the debris.

Kenshin looked back at the doors, reluctantly.

"Don't be a fool. You're not going in there and you're in no shape to press the issue with me." When he shifted, Sano could see the dark silhouette of a sword at his hip, under the loose workman's jacket he wore. He was right. The condition Kenshin was in and swordless to boot - - Saitou would pound him into the ground.

_If _he could get past Sano to do it. Sano stepped forward, close up to Kenshin's side and glared defiantly into Saitou's eyes. They were almost of a height. Saitou had a few inches on him if you discounted Sano's unruly hair.

"I still have a score to settle with you."

Saitou lifted a brow, not impressed. Infuriating man. Sano ground his teeth, thinking about how hard he'd trained during those years on the mainland and how much of it was due to proving something to this smug bastard here.

Saitou turned his back on them and started walking up the alley towards the street, leaving his hulking lackey to stand between them and the back door. Kenshin stood there, shoulders haunched a little, head down, fingers curled into fists, even though it had to hurt.

"To hell with him - -" Sano hissed softly, mostly for Kenshin's ears - - but not particularly caring if Saitou heard.

"No - -" Kenshin said. "I can't fight him and them. We'll hear what he has to say, Sano."

Sano cast a black look back at Saitou's man, then stuffed his hands in his pockets and shuffled after Kenshin.

It was just them and Saitou in a very secluded booth in an almost empty teahouse a good half dozen blocks from the slums where the Terakado inn had been. Saitou waved the hostess away after ordering a simple round of tea and Sano called her back, wanting food to fill his empty stomach. Saitou gave him a look like he was the biggest lout in the world for thinking of food when more serious things were afoot. Kenshin didn't look at him at all, his solemn, unnervingly serious gaze never leaving Saitou.

"What do you know about why I'm here?" Kenshin asked softly.

Killing soft. Like if Saitou gave the wrong answer there was going to be blood shed between them. Kenshin was damned scary when he got that look - - when everything soft and familiar about him just evaporated and what was left was a stone cold killer. Only Kenshin wasn't that. Even when he was pressed hard with his back to the wall - - he wasn't that - - so a body had to get past that dangerous look and all the things known about Kenshin's dubious past and break into the silence that Saitou let stretch out.

_Saitou. _Kenshin might not be a cold killer - - but Saitou was. Had been in the revolution and still was. He had a certain brand of honor though, a body had to admit that, even though a body might hate him with a passion. He didn't kill the innocent. If you were on the other side of that line though - - beware.

"Don't just sit there smoking, you asshole. Answer him!"

Saitou's lips twitched a little, and he inclined his head graciously as the waitress brought back the tea and made to pour for them. He let the two of them stew while she filled their cups, then waited until she had padded off before taking a sip of his.

"What do you know about an English merchant named Winter?" Saitou countered.

"You know him?" Sano asked.

Saitou cast him a look, then turned his gaze back to Kenshin. "Do you let him do your talking for you now?"

"Oh shut the fuck up - -" Sano snapped. "You're the one that asked us here."

"I asked _him,_" Saitou clarified.

"Yeah - - well - -"

"Would you two please stop," Kenshin said softly. "I know Winter and you know I do, if you stopped me from going into that inn and questioning those Yakuza. The question I have is why and how?"

"Why? Because the man has been a thorn in Japan's side for the last decade or more. He's a blackmarketeer, a gunrunner, a murderer, a conspirator with at least a half dozen corrupt government officials and at the moment he's in cohorts with the Yakuza in efforts to corner the trade coming into at least four major ports, Tokyo bay being the most notable. We've had a very great interest in this westerner for some time now. As to how - - well, let's just say I've a fly on the wall and I don't need you going in and swatting him."

Kenshin sat there a moment in silence, one knuckle pressed lightly against his bottom lip - -

"What do you mean - - fly on the wall?" Sano demanded when Kenshin didn't.

Saitou gave him another of those looks.

"He means," Kenshin said. "That he's got a man inside the Yakuza. All the way from Tokyo?"

He asked it quietly and Saitou shrugged. "It takes a great deal of effort to infiltrate such a close knit organization. I don't want my man compromised."

"Wait a minute." Sano held up a finger, a sudden angry thought hammering to get out of his head. "Just wait a damn minute. You're saying one of your men came from Tokyo with this damned English bastard and he stood there and watched while they did this to Kenshin." He made a swipe at Kenshin's hand, catching his wrist and holding the bandaged member up for Saitou to get a good look at.

"Sano - -" Kenshin tugged for him to release him.

"Your cop just stood there while they crucified him? While they - - while - - he almost died!"

"Sano - - let go," Kenshin repeated and Sano realized he had hauled him half way across the short table in efforts to get the bandaged hand close to Saitou. He let go and Kenshin pushed himself back, righting a tea cup that had spilled its contents across the table as he did.

"When a man is this deep undercover - - and when the mission is so important - - certain sacrifices must be made. He got word to me that there were rumors that the Battousai might have been involved. If that were the case - - well, one would trust Himura to be capable of extracting himself from such a situation."

"Well, he didn't," Sano snapped, wondering if Saitou's man had been there while they were raping Kenshin - - wondering if he'd passed that bit of information along to his smug superior. He looked to Kenshin, but he wasn't showing anything, his face impassive, not letting a scrap of emotion escape.

"I don't really care what he did - - or is doing - - or is conspiring to do - -" Kenshin finally said. "All that matters to me is that he took my wife and my son and that he's had two - - three days now - - head start on me and if your man knows where he's going then you find out for me, or I find out for myself, cover or no cover."

Saitou steepled his fingers, staring speculatively at Kenshin. "Why did he do it? Why take them?"

"Because he needed a replacement for a girl he killed. I don't know why? That wasn't one of the things he told me."

"What other things did he tell you, Kenshin?" Saitou leaned forward like a snake about to strike. Sano almost wanted to put an arm between them in case Saitou spewed out some sort of venom.

"He helped fund Shishio."

"Humm. Yes. We'd suspected Shishio had western backers and later after the threat was eliminated, Winter's name came up."

Kenshin took a breath, opened his mouth and shut it as the waitress came back with Sano's food. Sometime in the interim, Sano had surprisingly enough lost his appitite. Maybe it was the nauseating knowledge that a man that was supposed to be one of the good guys hadn't lifted a finger to stop Kaoru's kidnapping and Kenshin's torture.

"What the hell does any of that matter. All we need to know is where he's taken Kaoru." Sano slammed a fist down on the tabletop so hard the cups jumped, spilling more yet more tea.

"I don't know where he was going." Saitou stubbed out the remnants of his cigarette and fished in his pocket for another one.

"You don't know," Kenshin repeated slowly. "Or you won't tell?"

"Yeah, you seem to know everything else," Sano complained.

Saitou drew in a long drag of smoke, his eyes dark, narrow slits in the dim light of the restaurant. "This man did not confide the whole of his schemes to even the Yakuza he is aligned with. He already has them in a partnership. We feel he has been looking for more legitimate backing - - perhaps because his own backers in the west need the confidence that they are dealing with men of honor as opposed to a syndicate of organized criminals."

Saitou tapped ash into an empty tea cup, mouth twitching thoughtfully as he turned information over in his head. "What did he say about this woman? The one you say he killed?"

"Very little - -" Kenshin said. "That she knew a bit of English - - that he had a use for her - - but that she turned against him - - perhaps - - I was distracted at the time. She had bodyguards that he murdered as well - - so she must have been a woman of some consequence."

"The daughter of a man of consequence," Saitou surmised and Kenshin lifted a brow in question.

Saitou's lips turned up in a thin smile, genuinely pleased. "The Yakuza don't know where he was going - - only that it was to cement an alliance with an English shipping conglomerate. A legitimate alliance with a man who controls a good deal of the import/export trade in Tokyo bay. A former Shogunate who - - made out rather better than a good many of his peers after the revolution."

"This man - - he sent his daughter - - to do what? Negotiate a contract? Sign a treaty? Because he wouldn't travel out of Japan himself?" Kenshin asked.

"Most likely. Such a man might not accept the onslaught of the west well - - but he'll accept the wealth and the power relations with them might bring."

"If he sent his daughter he would know where and who she was meeting with." Kenshin's eyes got a little wider, a little more emotion showing through with the sudden burst of hope.

"Probably." Saitou blew a smoke ring lazily over the table.

"If you were so hot to get to Winter, why not have this guy under surveillance?" Sano demanded. "Why not question him?"

"Because - - this guy - - as you so simply put it - - has very high contacts in the Meiji Government. He has a great deal of legitimate political power and taking him into police custody to question like any common thug would have repercussions I'd rather not have to deal with."

"Okay, so we go and ask him, then. I mean, if Winter killed his daughter then he's not gonna be that loyal to the bastard, is he?"

"Very likely not. How amazingly astute of you, Sagara." As if Saitou thought it was the first bright idea that Sano had ever had.

Sano scowled, on the verge of snapping back when Kenshin spoke up.

"The Shogunate were stripped of land and power. Why does this man still hold his?"

"Ah - - did I forget to mention his alliance with the Meiji forces during the last years of the revolution? He betrayed the Towkogawa and the Meiji Government rewarded him for it by leaving him his wealth and his lands if not all of his honor."

"A traitor!" Sano spat. "It figures a traitor would be in cahoots with this English bastard."

"Don't be so harsh, Sagara - - a man will do a great many things to protect his children. The Meiji were desperate for the strategic lands and information he held so they sent a very clear message. They had his son and heir assassinated in his own home and sent his head and the heads of his personal guard to his father. Quite a few heads if I recall. How many were there, Himura? Seven - - Ten?"

Kenshin's fists knotted, his eyes barely visible slits under the fall of his hair. "Nine. There were nine."

"You - -?" Sano blinked.

Kenshin flashed him a look and not a happy one. There was desperation and guilt and a plea for understanding all in that one split second when their eyes met, then it was gone, replaced by hard chips of amethyst and tight line of mouth.

"When his second son was threatened," Saitou said. "The old man chose to preserve his family line - - I'm sure if Himura showed up on his doorstep asking for assistance, he'd be less than willing to grant it - - murdered daughter or no."

"Okay. Okay, So Kenshin doesn't have to be there. But I'll damn well ask."

"Yeessss. Of the pair of you, you are the diplomatic one," Saitou drawled.

Sano growled at the dripping sarcasm. He half rose, lifting a threatening fist that Saitou ignored with a completeness that was infuriating.

Kenshin's light fingers on his arm kept him from lunging across the table.

"Erizawa - - that was his name wasn't it? The old Shogunate? Where does he live, Saitou?" Kenshin asked.

"You're a fool," Saitou remarked.

"Very often of late. Where does he live?"

"Outside of Tokyo." Saitou shrugged. "Will you send this buffoon in to tell him of his daughter's murder and expect Erizawa to spill all he knows?"

"Buffoon?"

"No. I'll go myself."

"Fool."

Kenshin rose. Sano stared. They'd just traveled over half the distance from Tokyo to get here. Now Kenshin wanted to trudge back down the same damned wet, miserable, ghost ridden, bandit-infested path.

"Where's that damned silly sword of yours, Himura?"

Kenshin gave Saitou a dark look, very much, a body assumed, not wishing to admit certain weaknesses before him.

"He gave it away," Sano answered, just disgusted enough with the stupidity of the act to blurt it out.

Saitou made a face. "You're hopeless, Himura. It's a wonder you made it this far. Why don't you go home and tend your garden and your dojo and wait for me to do my own job."

"Rot in hell, Saitou." Kenshin hissed and Saitou's mouth quirked up in a half smile.

"If you were doing your job this wouldn't have happened and we wouldn't have to be trying to do it for you," Sano accused.

"Oh, shut up, Sagara. Tokyo is little more than a day's travel by rail. If you're set on going - - then there are trains leaving this very night."

Chapter Twelve

The trip from home to Sendai had seemed to take forever, filled with pain, disappointment, danger and horrible weather. It had drained mind and body and left spirits dull with the frustration of knowing that he was too far behind Winter to ever catch up - - too far to take back what was his - - but he'd hoped. He'd held on to that scrap of optimism that somehow he'd beat the odds and catch up to the Englishman before he had the chance to sweep Kaoru and Kenji out of his reach.

An optimism that was swiftly fading, replaced by a dark tide of disillusionment. Kenshin couldn't help it. It pulled him down, those hours sitting on the train with Sano on his left and Saitou - - Saitou who had blithely inserted himself into their company - - across from him, in the comfortable passenger car that Saitou had arranged for them to travel in. They were away from the bleating of goats, the squawking of chickens, the yammering of too many bodies pressed too close together in too small a space, that they had experienced in the ride from Shirakawa to Sendai. He didn't want Saitou here. He didn't want his innuendos and his snide remarks and his callous assessment of the situation. He didn't want to know how many cold-blooded plots Winter had been at the core of in his many years in Japan. He didn't want to know just how deadly the man was that held his wife and son. He didn't want to have to rely on the help of a man who had little reason to hold Kenshin any good will to find them.

Erizawa. He remembered Erizawa, or the heir at any rate. He remembered his shocked face those few precious seconds before the young man had died - - at his blade. With a house full of murdered bodyguards leading the way to him. He'd come in the night and left no witnesses in his wake. The minions of his lord had come after and done the gruesome deed of separating heads from bodies and delivering the ultimatums. He'd had no part in that - - having more than fulfilled his task. They'd never wasted him on such trivial things. He'd never questioned his assignments - - because he'd trusted the men that had given them to him. He'd held allegiance to those lords and it had not been his place to question, only to obey. It was the way of the samurai.

Perhaps that particular bloody task had held merit. The assistance of Erizawa had given the Meiji forces an advantage they hadn't had before. Perhaps those deaths had meant something. He liked to think so. He liked not to think about it at all, truth be told. He liked to immerse himself in the here and now and forget about the past - - but sometimes the past wouldn't stand still and let itself be forgotten.

His right hand ached. It felt hot and it hadn't felt that way for a few days now. Not the fevered sort of hot that came with infection. Sano had bitched and cursed at him for abusing it so - - but he'd had little choice with a man coming at his back with a naked blade. The both of them would have ended up bloodless corpses dumped into the sea if he'd not parried those blows.

Saitou had been correct. There was no way he could have gotten past him, if he'd chosen to press the issue at the Terakado inn. Even with a sword he'd have been sorely disadvantaged. And he had Sano to think about - - he had that warrant that Sano chose to ignore coming back here - - and that he had little doubt that Saitou would use to his advantage if Sano - - or Kenshin - - foiled his carefully planned operation too badly. He didn't doubt that Saitou might have had a thing or two to do with that particular warrant - - issued years ago - - that had chased Sano out of Japan in the first place. Saitou tended to hold grudges and Sano had gotten under his skin. Sano had that particular talent in excess - - the ability to grate on certain nerves.

He'd talk privately to Saitou later, when his ego and spirit were not feeling so bruised and ask if he might surreptitiously have the complaint against Sano swept under the mat. Saitou_ owed_ him, after all. Owed him a great deal.

"You okay?" Sano asked him once and he blinked wondering if Sano had been talking to him and for how long he'd been sitting there, engrossed in his own dour musings, oblivious to the world.

"What?" Kenshin blinked owlishly, floundering out of the mire of his own making. Saitou stared at him, flicked ash out the open window, a faint conceited, twitching of his thin lips. It was a look he'd give Sano, more often than not, and Kenshin disliked being on the receiving end of it.

"I asked if you were okay?" Sano jerked his head towards Kenshin's lap, where he was vigorously worrying the bandages of the one hand with the other.

Kenshin stopped the action with an effort, gazing out the window away from both Saitou's contemptuous stare and Sano's concerned one. He did not need either.

"When we do this - -" Sano said - - maybe repeating something he'd said before that Kenshin hadn't caught. " - - you don't have to tell this Erizawa guy who you are. He doesn't have to know."

Saitou snorted softly and the hand with the cigarette gestured towards Kenshin. "Oh, yes, Himura is so nondescript - - a man with an interest would certainly never connect the hair and the scar and the pretty face to the legendary Battousai."

Sano glared. "Well, what do you suggest?"

"I suggest he go home and stay out of it."

"Not fucking likely." Sano leaned forward, ripe for trouble that didn't need to be contended with confined in the passenger car of a train.

"I'm going," Kenshin stated flatly, still staring out the window at the fast passing landscape. "It is my wife and son that Winter has. It was me who found the body of Erizawa's daughter. It is me who'll find him and make him pay."

"Oh? You'll kill him? Doesn't that go against your silly values?" Saitou inquired. One could very much understand Sano wanting to jump over and strangle Saitou.

"I didn't say that," he said softly, but, oh, he'd wanted to. Very badly wanted to, both at the dojo and later in the mountains. If he had had a sword in his hands when Winter had teased him with the prospect of giving Kaoru over to one of his confidants as a mistress - - his vow to never take another life would have ended in failure, then and there. And he wouldn't have cared.

"Then what a waste of time this is." Saitou flicked his butt out the window.

"If he can't - - I won't have a problem with it," Sano promised, sounding grim and serious.

Kenshin cast him a look, disturbed by the vehemence in Sano's tone. Disturbed by the way Sano clenched his fists so hard the joints cracked alarmingly. Sano had never been a killer. He didn't want him to start for his sake - - but telling him that, in Saitou's smug presence was impossible. Later. He'd talk to him later about it.

"At least one of you lives in the real world," Saitou remarked, fishing for another cigarette.

"Nobody asked you," Sano snarled.

Kenshin thought that if they started bickering again, he'd have to get up and flee to the end of the car to outdistance it, but Saitou merely smiled that unwholesome smile of his and turned his head to watch the landscape flash by.

Tokyo. Back again. This time in the midst of sunshine and fair weather. Sano stepped off the train and breathed the air like it had a different flavor from the air in the rest of Japan. Maybe for him it did, having spent most of his life here. To Kenshin it just felt oppressive. Stagnant, even, with the gut deep knowledge that the things that held meaning for him here were gone.

He wasn't sure he wanted to go to the dojo - - to the familiar haunts that held strong reminiscences of Kaoru. Silly. Tremendously silly of him - - and superstitious, he supposed, and here he'd declared himself _not_ superstitious. It wasn't as if she were dead - - - oh, and wasn't that a gut wrenching notion. He tried to banish the whole train of thought. Tried to concentrate on the clean streets of Tokyo and Saitou walking purposefully in front of him, and Sano striding lazily at his side, hands stuffed into pockets and making comments here and there how this had changed since he'd been gone, yet that remained the same.

"It's only been four years. It's not like you've been gone a life time - -"

Sano shrugged, slanting him a look, relaxed for some strange reason now they were off the train and heading towards a daunting destination.

"Sometimes it seemed that way."

Saitou procured a carriage, impatient to be about this business. Walking all the way to the Nikko Kaido road in the far eastern boarder of Tokyo would have taken more time than Saitou apparently wanted to spend. All the wealthiest families had their manors in those manicured suburbs that rested between Tokyo proper and Somei.

The Erizawa manor was an old one, set far off the main road and protected by tall gates and large, ornamental gardens. Saitou had asked in no uncertain terms to let him do the talking.

"Just keep your mouth shut and look subservient and maybe he'll take you for one of my underlings and we can avoid him trying to kill the lot of us."

That had been offensive. Of course Saitou had meant it as such. He took perverse pleasure in offending Kenshin, though he hardly ever showed the satisfaction on his face. All a man could do, caught in the act of glowering unappreciatively up at Saitou at the gates of a former shogun, was lower his head so that hair covered the anger when the servants answered the bell at the gates and asked what their business was.

Saitou was an official in the police department and had information vital to Lord Erizawa. It was critical that he see him post haste. Saitou had the credentials and the demeanor to impress the gate staff and they ushered him and Sano and Kenshin through the ornate gardens and to the manor, where they shed their shoes and waited in a small elegantly appointed room for the appearance of the manor lord.

Erizawa did not appear. A sleight serving man did, declaring that his lord was occupied in the maintenance of his garden and that he would see them there if they wished, and if they did not, an appointment would be arranged. So they redoned their shoes and followed the servant around the manor to the back where the gardens were even more splendid than those fronting the estate. Someone had put decades of love and dedication into the crafting of this garden, for the trees were large and twisted artfully with age and the touch of a patient hand, and the plants rich and thick and still full with bloom even this late into the year.

There was an old man in a plain kimono on his knees by a potted bonsai, carefully pruning errant growth. He had a neatly trimmed gray beard and a face rich with lines. His eyes were shrewd when he glanced up and took notice of their approach. There was very little of jovial good cheer about him, very little true peace - - but on his knees in the dirt beside the tree he had no doubt been training for years - - he came as close to it as a man of his past - - a man who dabbled in questionable politics in his present - - might.

"After so long a drought - - the rains have brought the gardens new life." The old lord said, polite enough to greet his visitors with trivial pleasantries. His eyes flickered from Saitou, to Sano, to Kenshin, then back to Saitou, who was unformed and armed and thus demanded more respect - - or at least more direct attention.

Saitou had never been much on pleasantries and had no tolerance for triviality at all. "We've come to inquire about a business partner of yours, lord Erizawa. An Englishman named Winter."

Erizawa never flinched. He was that cool, but then a former shogun would be. There was very little that would phase such a man - - other than the death of a child perhaps.

"An Englishman? I'm afraid you've wasted a trip then. I have no dealings with the English."

"Ah, my sources tell me otherwise - - but, if they are mistaken, how fortunate for you - - for it would mean your daughter was alive and well and not murdered at the hands of this Englishman."

Again, Erizawa didn't flinch, though Kenshin did, appalled at Saitou's utter lack of diplomacy.

"You are mistaken - - detective - -?"

"Captain. Saitou Hijime." Saitou corrected.

"My daughter is on holiday."

"In the west?" Saitou asked and the old man's eyes narrowed.

"You have proved yourselves unpalatable guests. I tire of this conversation. Goro, show them out!"

One of the servants appeared at the old man's bark.

"She was young and probably beautiful. She had two bodyguards with her that put up a fight to defend her, but he killed the both of them. He stabbed her once up through the ribs and into her heart. She died quickly," Kenshin said softly as Sano was growling at the servant. "He dumped all of their bodies into one of the canals in the city. This was many weeks ago, before the rains came to break the drought. He killed her because she discovered he was dealing with the Yakuza as well as with you."

The old lord stared at him and for the first time there was naked emotion on his face. "You - - _lie._ This is some trick to - - to - - you will leave this house now!"

"It is not a lie. I can have the police report sent to you, though the bodies are long since disposed of - - unnamed and unclaimed," Saitou said. "I'll also have sent to you a list of the crimes this Englishman has committed against the stability of our nation - - if you doubt his motives or his nature."

"Get out!" the old man said and Saitou shrugged and turned to do just that. "I'll have those reports sent round and I will be in touch."

"We're just leaving?" Sano gaped. Kenshin took his arm and steered him back down the garden path. "He didn't tell us anything."

"Sano. Give it time. He knows she's dead. That was clear in his face. Let him grieve a little and he'll tell us what we want to know."

"My thoughts exactly," Saitou concurred.

"You might have broken it more gently," Kenshin complained and Saitou gave him a disdainful look and sniffed. "Over tea, perhaps? Should I have held his hand? You've turned into a woman."

"Oh - - shut up," Kenshin growled under his breath, finding himself once more in the street outside Erizawa's estate.

Saitou gave him a level stare and a frown. "We're lucky he didn't recognize you. I told you to let me do the talking."

Kenshin chewed the inside of his lip, thinking that Erizawa was not a man to ignore the little details. He might not have put two and two together at the moment of their visit with the news of the possibility of his daughter's murder fresh on his mind - - but that didn't mean he wouldn't after he'd had time to think.

With Tokyo to the west down the Nikko Kaido road there was very little else to do but contemplate a trip home.

Home. The dojo. The place he'd stayed for the most part of almost six years now - - he didn't particularly want to go back now, empty handed as he was. But Sano was yammering about seeing the place and finding out whether the widow and her daughter had made it there all right. And the neighbors would know whether any foul deed had befallen Dr. Genzai and the girls - - and there were other folks who were bound to be wondering what had happened to empty the halls of Kamiya Dojo in the span of a night. And there was the cat. He worried that the cat might have abandoned the dojo without anyone to bribe her with bits of fish.

So Saitou dropped them off at the gates of the Kamiya dojo and took the carriage back to the police station, telling them he'd send someone round if he got word from Erizawa or if he needed something from them. Kenshin asked him out of Sano's hearing, if he wouldn't please ignore any grudges against Sano and forget the matter of the warrant.

Saitou had lifted a thin brow and not commented one way or another. He was never a man to give away advantages when he had them - - over his enemies or his allies. So they parted ways with Kenshin uneasy over the prospect of police showing up on his doorstep in search of Sanosuke and Sano apparently not uneasy over the subject at all if one took his ramblings about beefpots and cherished local gaming dens to heart.

The gates to Kamiya dojo were closed, but not locked when they tried them. The front yard was very orderly as they stepped inside, the ground raked clean and no unsightly weeds in evidence. It did not appear like a place that had been abandoned weeks before.

"Well, okay," Sano said, striding forward when Kenshin would have hesitated at the threshold of the gateway. "Isn't this a familiar sight. Hasn't changed much at all since I left. Anybody here?" he bellowed out the last and Kenshin flinched at the reverberating echoes.

If a place could draw breath in shock at such an alarming and loud demand, Kenshin thought the dojo might have. Or maybe that was merely him - - startled out of his hesitation by the sheer strength of Sano's lungs. The neighbors three houses down could have heard that inquiry.

There was movement from around the corner of the main building, from the path leading around back where the garden was and the kitchen. A small, slim figure that poked its head around the corner hesitantly. Big eyes. Skinny. Fearful. Kenshin didn't recognize the child, but Sano apparently did, for he grinned and walked forward.

"Hey, Minako - - see you made it here. Your mom around?"

She nodded, her face relaxing a little, her mouth almost threatening a slight smile.

Kenshin followed slowly, staring at the closed doors of the dojo proper having an unsettling flash of memory of wet floor and intruders lurking in the shadows of his home. Of Winter walking freely about it - - a viper in their midst. He shook his head to chase the disquieting reminiscences away.

The widow Hatayama had set up her loom on the porch overlooking the garden and the well. She had just risen, it seemed at Sano's call, from weeding in the garden. The knees of her peasant trousers were brown with fresh turned dirt, her hands stained with it. She bowed deeply to Sano and to Kenshin who drifted into the yard behind him, hardly raising her eyes to look either of them in the face. Perhaps she thought he'd changed his mind about inviting her here - - that she might be punished for the intrusion. She had probably been punished for lesser things in the mountain village she'd fled.

"You've taken good care for the house," Kenshin said. "You have my gratitude."

Her eyes flickered up briefly to fix on his face - - gauging the validity of his words. He smiled softly and found it took an effort to do it. He did not wish to be here. He truly did not.

"The garden seems to be thriving even this late in the season."

"I've harvested the summer vegetables and put up what I could - - and planted fall crops. I found the seeds in your storage - -" she almost sounded guilty over that bit of common sense.

"Thank you."

"We've eaten very little - -"

"I invited you here - - take what you need - - it will only go to waste otherwise. Have you seen a cat?"

"A cat?" the little girl spoke for the first time. "There's a cat that lives here. She comes for supper."

"Ah - - that sounds like her. She likes fish. Do you know where the river is? There's a fishing pole in the shed."

The child's eyes lit at the prospect.

"Speaking of fish and gardens and things," Sano said. "Is there any food around?"

"Has anyone come round asking for me or - - my wife?" Kenshin ignored Sano's plea for substance.

"Yes," the widow said - -

"Kenshin? - - where have you been? It's about time you came home?" An upset female voice proceeded the tall, willowy figure of a narrow eyed female. Megumi stormed around the corner into the backyard, long hair sweeping behind her, mouth open for further complaint - - and just suddenly stopped when she saw Sano and stood there for a uncharacteristically speechless moment before she got her wits back about her.

"Sanosuke? You're back?"

Sano shrugged and grinned, looking a just a little wary as Megumi stormed up to him, looking him up and down critically as if to assure herself that it was indeed the Sagara Sanosuke who'd abandoned Tokyo some four or more years ago.

"Hey, Megumi, long time no see, huh?"

"Where have you been?" She demanded, then glanced to Kenshin and repeated the question in a shriller tone, then adding. "Where are Kaoru and Kenji? You send Dr. Genzai to me in the dark of the night with assassins supposedly on his heels and you don't even tell him everything that's going on? Are you insane? Do you know how worried we've been?"

"I'm sorry - -"

"What kind of trouble did you get into this time? Was it really the Yakuza who sent men after Dr. Genzai and the girls - - because of something you did?"

"No - -"

"And where are Kaoru and Kenji? Are they inside?"

"Megumi San - -'

"What happened to your hands? Those bandages are filthy."

"Will you shut up, woman, and let him get a word in edgewise?" Sano snapped, frustrated.

Megumi pressed her lips tight and took a breath. She was not usually a woman who babbled, or who spoke rashly without thought. But Kenshin supposed she'd had enough reason to worry and unrelieved worry could make even a reasonable person brash.

"Are Dr. Genzai and the girls all right?" he asked, to avoid the subject of Kaoru and Kenji and his failure there.

"They're fine. They're still at my house because you told them not to come back to the city until you said it was safe. Is it safe?"

He opened his mouth. Shut it. He had no idea. Less now than when he'd left. He hadn't offended a Yakuza boss then, only ruffed up a few Yakuza thugs. "I don't know. I'll talk to Saitou - -"

"Saitou? Saitou Hajime? Oh, he'll be of great help." Megumi sniffed, her opinion of Saitou only slightly higher than Sano's. "Where are Kaoru and Kenji?"

"Listen, can we talk about this over a beefpot?" Sano interceded himself between Kenshin and Megumi's demanding eyes. He made a very good shield. It would have been nice to melt away while Sano covered his retreat, but Megumi needed to be told or she'd hound him to death and he supposed going to the Akabeko and sating Sano's need for a decent beefpot was as good a place as any. There were people there that would want to know what had happened to Kaoru and Kenji and well. He didn't think he had it in him to tell the tale more than once, so best to get it out of the way in the presence of as many interested parties as possible.

Sano ended up telling a great deal of it. Kenshin obviously was reluctant to talk about it. Kenshin kept getting this far away, distressed look in his eyes that made Sano want to shoo Megumi and the girls away from him so that it would go away. Tae and Tsubame weren't nearly so bad as Megumi, who always had been pushy, in Sano's opinion - - but they were hovering at the edge of the booth, staring wide-eyed as Kenshin tried to get the story out. The widow and her daughter, sat very quietly, almost frightened looking, on the opposite side of the short table.

Megumi was fussing with the bandages of one of Kenshin's hands, aghast at the wounds they hid. She got pissed off then, and the story got off track while she ranted a little and blamed Sano for not taking better care for the bandages and Kenshin for being a fool and not looking out for himself and cursed the mountain bandits that had done it to him in the first place. She was all ready to whisk him back to the dojo to take a proper look at the wounds, but the beefpot had just recently appeared at the table and Sano declared that Kenshin had gone this long without her poking and prodding him, and that she could wait until the beefpot was properly finished before she started.

The story eventually was told and Tsubame - - who'd grown up considerably since the last time Sano had seen her - - She'd been a pip-squeak kid working at the Akabeko when he'd left - - was openly crying and wringing her hands.

"Oh, poor Kaoru. Poor Kenji." She was crying and Kenshin was getting a bleaker and bleaker look on his face because of it.

"Say, Tsubame, could you go get me some sake?" Sano asked, just to give her something to do other than make Kenshin miserable and she scuttled of, wiping her face. Tae lingered a little bit, somber and uncertain.

"So where's Yahiko?" Sano asked between mouthfuls.

"Looking for him," Megumi said, indicating Kenshin with a jut of her jaw. "When Dr. Genzai told me what had happened - - or what little he knew of what had happened - -well, I came right to Tokyo and found the Kamiya Dojo deserted. I didn't know what to do, really. I went to the police, but they were of absolutely no help. Two days later, when I was about at the end of my wits - - Yahiko showed up. He'd been in Nagoya I think - - don't ask me why - - and he'd just gotten back and knew even less than I did. He started hunting down Yakuza trying to find out what was going on - - but didn't get anywhere."

"He didn't," Kenshin said, aghast.

"He did," Megumi said dryly. "You'd think he'd have outgrown that impetuous, foolish behavior - - but apparently males never do." She gave both Sano and Kenshin pointedly accusing looks. "And then Hatayama Chiyo and her daughter showed up at the dojo saying that you'd sent them there down from the mountains - - that you'd been hurt and that you were with him - -" she gave Sano a dubious look. "- - no great comfort that, let me tell you."

"What do you mean by that?" Sano demanded, waving food laden chopsticks. "If it wasn't for me, he'd be dead. Tell her, Kenshin!"

"Very likely, Megumi san," Kenshin sighed, pushing food around his dish listlessly. "Did Yahiko follow me north?"

"Yes, after Chiyo told us what she knew of what had happened. The two of you are not very informative, I'll have you know. You make the poor woman abandon her home and don't even tell her a scrap of what's going on." Megumi cast the widow a sympathetic look.

"Knowledge is not always a healthy thing," Kenshin said and Megumi sniffed, disbelieving that bit of wisdom.

Eventually, when the last bit of food had been consumed, Megumi bullied Kenshin back to the dojo to see the state of his wounds for herself. The widow Hatayama and her daughter went with them. Sano declined, not willing to listen to Megumi's cutting complaints when there was a city to reacquaint himself with. So he abandoned Kenshin and got a look for it from under the fall of Kenshin's hair that suspiciously looked liked a man betrayed. But, as intimidating as Megumi could be when she put her mind to it, he managed to walk away without a shred of guilt.

He returned to the dojo much later, a little drunk, without a coin to his name and happy nonetheless. He'd found a few old friends, discovered a few more moved on to other places - - made a few new ones in the span of an afternoon walking about the city - - stopping in this tavern or that, playing a hand of dice here a game of chance there - - only barely avoiding a fight and then only because the other party had backed down. It had been a good afternoon. He hadn't realized until he was back in her arms, how much he missed Tokyo. It felt good walking down streets as familiar as the back of his hand - - familiar smells, familiar faces, familiar places. Distant lands and exotic places were all fine and good, but a man needed an anchor. A man needed something familiar to keep him from drifting. A man needed home once and a while.

It was dark when he slipped past the dojo's gates. Someone had lit a few paper lanterns, which cast the front yard in a dim light. There were more around back. The back was where they had always gathered. By the kitchen and the well, and the small garden with its goldfish pond. It was a very poor garden indeed compared to old man Erizawa's.

He wondered if Erizawa had had a change of heart yet. Wondered if Saitou, sneaky bastard that he was, would even let them know if the old man did contact him. Kenshin would lose his mind if he didn't. He'd been damned disappointed after that interview and trying not to let it show. Sano figured he was wondering if this trip back to Tokyo had been wasted time. Maybe it had. Who the hell knew.

Around to the back and he was greeted by the rhythmic sound of the loom, the soft chirp of crickets the occasional plop of a fish hitting the surface of the water, after some unlucky bug that had landed on the surface of the pool.

Megumi was sitting on the porch, carefully grinding dried herbs in a ceramic bowl and portioning them out in small packets. Her bulky medicine box sat open beside her. The little girl was sitting quietly on the grass next to the porch, playing some pretend game with the doll Sano had given her in the mountains, while her mother patiently worked the loom.

"Where's Kenshin?"

Megumi shrugged. "About somewhere. He's restless."

She almost smiled at him. The corner of her mouth twitched a little, but she forced it down. "He ought to be resting. He's still weak from those wounds. It takes time to heal that sort of thing and inactivity. He's not allowing for either one, which doesn't surprise me, mind you."

"Yeah, well - - you can't tell him anything when he's got his mind set."

"You didn't do a half bad job taking care for him, considering."

"Yeah - - considering what?" He asked warily.

"Considering that you have less sense than he does when it comes to self preservation."

She did sort of smile then, which diffused his initial instinct to take offense. So he shrugged and ambled over to sprawl on the porch, staring into the shadows of the yard. Nice to do this to. To laze away the evening here until Kaoru chased him away so she could lock up the dojo for the night or until he fell asleep on the porch and slept the night away under her roof, only to be woken in the morning at an unhealthy hour by her or Yahiko stirring. Kenshin was an early riser, but generally not that early unless he had an agenda to attend to.

Reminiscing made him think about Yahiko and wonder how much a twelve year old had changed in years that he'd been gone. Mature enough for Kenshin to consider giving him the reverse blade. He tried to imagine a mostly grown Yahiko and couldn't get past the scrawny kid he'd known when he'd left.

"So what were you doing, all this time?" Megumi broke the silence softly and Sano blinked, almost surprised to have her ask it. He lay back, hands behind his head and told her a few of his milder adventures. He told her things he thought she might find interest in and avoided the things that would earn him censure. Gods knew there were enough of those things.

"And you?" he asked finally when he'd run out of steam and the silence had taken over again. "You a famous doctor now?"

". . . . just a doctor."

"You're not married again by now. Not somebody's wife?"

Her brows drew down and she frowned. "Not that it's any of your concern, but I don't need a man to support and protect me. I can take care for myself."

"I didn't say that you couldn't - -"

"- - But, there is a man I've met in my home village - - he doesn't mind so much - - about my past - - or that I'm a woman doctor - - who knows what might happen."

"Ha. Good for you." Sano grinned at her. She half smiled back.

The widow stopped her work and quietly ushered Minako off to bed. Megumi began to put her own supplies away and prepare for the same herself. "The widow and Minako are staying in the extra room. I'm sleeping in Kenji's room, though I can sleep with them, if you want - -" she offered.

"No. It's a pretty warm night, I'll stay on the porch. It's not like I haven't slept out here before - -"

"All right." She got up, hefting the weight of her medicine box. "Go find Kenshin and make him go to sleep. He ought to get as much rest as he can - - before the lot of you set out to do whatever it is that needs doing to find Kaoru and the child."

Good enough. He got up, stretched and padded down the porch and around the yard without the benefit of a lantern. If Kenshin wasn't already in his room, then he figured he'd find him in the main Dojo. The very faint flickering light of a low candle flame proved him right. You couldn't see it at all through the closed door panels at the front of the building, but when he quietly slid one of the doors open, the weak light seeped out.

Kenshin was up at the front of the big room, sitting very still and very quiet before the little shrine where Kaoru's father's swords were. He had one of those swords across his knees, sheathed, his cleanly bandaged hands resting lightly on hilt and sheath.

Sano walked slowly across the floor, trying to recall if he'd ever seen Kenshin touch Kaoru's father's sword before.

"Is it foolish, Sano - -" Kenshin asked softly, without turning. "Not to take up a sword to defend my family?"

"No," Sano said and he believed it. "You defend them however you can. That's just what you do for the people you love. Doesn't mean you have to turn your back on all your ideals."

Kenshin lifted the sword, thumbing the sword from the sheath so that a mere inch of gleaming metal showed. "Ideals? I was ready to kill Winter - - twice. Without a second thought - - without hesitation - - without remorse - - the only reason I didn't was because he threatened me with Kaoru and Kenji. If I kill for them - - will they hate me for it, do you think?"

"Will you hate yourself?" Sano sank down cross-legged on the floor next to Kenshin. "That's really more important, don't you think?"

Kenshin flashed him a look. "I'm no stranger to that. It doesn't matter. Kaoru matters. Kenji does.'

Sano sniffed, disgusted. "If you killed somebody protecting her and she held it against you - - then she either gets over it - - or - - or the hell with her! That's what I think. I'd damn well kill a man that was threatening somebody I loved if that's what it took."

"Did you?"

"What?" Sano blinked, off guard.

"The widow - - while Megumi was looking at me - - she said bandits would have killed her and Minako out of revenge mostly because the bandit chieftain had been killed. That you had done that when you found me. Did you?"

Sano swallowed, remembering that black, mindless rage that had come over him. And the grief. He hated the memory of the utter, soul-eating grief more than the violence and the rage.

"Yeah. I did. I thought you were dead - -" Dead and raped and tortured. "I'd never - - used the futae no kiwami to kill anybody before - - not flat out like that. I wasn't much thinking at the moment. He caught me off guard - - came up on me when I'd just found you - - " Lifeless, cold and bloody. "He - - he said some stuff and I just lost it. I don't regret it. He was a murdering, raping bastard and he deserved to die."

Kenshin frowned and Sano regretted spitting out that last. Regretted bringing up something that Kenshin had either blocked out or didn't remember at all. Or maybe Kenshin was just frowning at his cold-blooded admittance of murder.

"There are a lot of men that do - - deserve death." Kenshin said softly. "But, I don't ever want to play the part of executioner again. It eats too much of the soul, Sano. It takes things you can never get back away from you."

"It didn't take anything away from me. And no matter what you think - - everything you've done - - you came away from it a better man."

"So philosophical." Kenshin slid the sword back tight into the sheath and rested it on his knees again. "You surprise me."

Which was Kenshin's way of wanting out of this particular subject. Sano had disturbed him and he was fleeing the discomfort.

"So, should I take up the sword again to find them - - it hardly matters, since I've already taken it up - - how many times since this started? I forget."

Kenshin hadn't forgotten and Sano knew it. "Three times, but you didn't kill anybody, remember?"

"It would be apropos to take her father's blade, don't you think?"

Sano opened his mouth. Shut it. Then opened it again. "Put it back and sleep on it, Kenshin. Megumi says you need your sleep."

Kenshin didn't move to follow that advice. So Sano reached across him and wrapped his big fingers around the lacquered, ornamental sheath, lifting the blade off Kenshin's lap and placing back in its proper place on the rack.

Kenshin didn't protest it. He pressed his lips tight and clenched his fingers, staring straight ahead. Sightless. Distraught or pissed off. Sano wasn't exactly certain which.

"Kenshin - -" he didn't know what to say of a sudden, leaning so close that his chest touched Kenshin's rigid shoulder. He'd had a mouthful of things to say before and now it just dried up. He wanted to help - - he wanted to alleviate this pain, but Kenshin's struggle was as much internal as external and there was damned little a man could do to chase another man's demons away. He dropped his forehead to Kenshin's shoulder for a second, sighing, tired himself and struggling no little bit with his own demons and most of those dancing around the aching desire for Kenshin that he couldn't drive away, no matter how hard he tried.

"Just go to bed, okay. If we have to deal with Saitou tomorrow and the old man - - you'll need your wits about you."

"Okay." Kenshin said softly, not shifting until Sano lifted his head and scooted back. Not getting up until Sano did and padding silently across the floor, slipping his feet into his sandals outside then shuffling down the path towards the back.

Sano lagged behind, not particularly eager to sleep anywhere near Kenshin. Not here. Not with the notions he'd had in his head of late. It was damned unsettling to begin with, but here - -with the ghost of Kaoru and a kid Sano had never met hovering about the place - - it was downright sacrilegious. Better to hang back and let the cool night air kill any amorous thoughts his body might insist on entertaining come morning. A smart man, a truly smart man wouldn't have followed Kenshin to the doors of his chamber. A smart man would have taken himself far enough away to be safe - - far enough away where the spirits that looked after this place couldn't sense what was going on inside his head. What his intentions were.

Kenshin got to the door of the chamber he'd shared with Kaoru for the last four years and froze. His hand hovered near the door panel and his fingers shook.

"What's wrong?" Sano asked, edging forward despite his better judgment. Close enough in the darkness to hear the ragged intake of Kenshin's breath.

"I - - can't."

"Can't?"

Kenshin backed up a step and into Sano, who damned well should have moved to give him space instead of standing there like a pervert desperate to cop a feel. Of course Kenshin should have stepped away, too, but Kenshin's common sense was debatable these days and Kenshin was distraught and desperate and gods knew what else other than trusting an obviously untrustworthy friend.

"Its not right. I don't know why - -but it doesn't feel right. Sleeping in there when she's - -" he trailed off and Sano figured out the rest. When she was kidnapped and maybe dead. When Kenshin had been gullible enough to let it happen. When Kenshin had been inept enough to let himself get fucked up so he couldn't follow and nip the trouble in the bud. Oh, so many reasons that guilt wouldn't let him comfortably go into that room and unroll their sleeping mat and lay down where they had lain together and not come out of that room tomorrow hollow eyed and exhausted from the nightmares that would haunt him. If he slept at all.

Sano could understand. Sano could for the moment, say to hell with what whatever guardian spirits looked over this place thought, and slide his hands onto Kenshin's shoulders in a comraderdly motion of comfort. If there had been a modicum of space between them, it would have been a decent, honest gesture. I didn't feel honest. It felt like he was taking advantage. It felt like he was a lecher of the worst sort, standing there with his skin tingling over the warmth of Kenshin's back and Kenshin's buttocks up against his body. He forced himself away then, blushing and grateful for the night to cover it. He rubbed vigorously at the back of his neck, a nervous gesture, and indicated the covered porch.

"I'm sleeping on the porch. A couple of blankets and it'll be better than most places we've slept for a while, huh?"

Kenshin looked at him, at the porch, then let his eyes drift back to the closed door. "I'm being stupid." He finally said, a soft, wry admittance.

"Maybe, maybe not." Sano said. "I'm not one to judge. I've been waking up most every night since that damned Bhuddist temple, thinking ghosts are hovering over me."

Kenshin's mouth twitched a little. "Is that why?"

Sano ran a hand through his hair, feeling silly admitting such a thing even though it was plain truth. "Yeah. Nightmares, I guess. I always believed in ghosts and spirits and whatnot - - but never that I'd actually run into one. Now I'm seeing them behind rocks and in shadows and - - and don't fucking laugh at me or I'll knock you on your ass."

Kenshin killed the smile with an effort, his eyes all large and solemn in the darkness. He put out a hand and the distance Sano had put between them melted with just the touch of Kenshin's fingers on his arm.

"Thank you, Sano. It is a nice night, I think. The porch will make a fine place to sleep."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Thirteen

Kenshin couldn't sleep. Not in his and Kaoru's room. Not on the porch outside in the balmy fall air. He'd slept better on the road, unprotected from rain and wind, than he did here. He rose with the sun after a miserable night and padded around to the front of the dojo while Sano still slept. If he was going to be restless and melancholy, he thought, he might as well not disturb other's sleep with it. Besides, Sano got testy if he was woken too early in the morning.

But, seeing the early side of dawn proved useful, for he was the only one up and about when Saitou came knocking at the gate, self-satisfied in his well pressed uniform and his slick smile and slicker black hair.

"What did you find out?" Kenshin demanded flatly, with one hand on the sliding gate panel and the other on the side of the gate, a sleepless night making him just a tad surly and Saitou's ever-smug expression getting under his skin.

"Erizawa has extended an invitation to his for breakfast tea."

Kenshin frowned, wondering why Saitou had bothered to come round and include him in such a summons. He didn't trust Saitou or his motives and Saitou had already said he'd just as well not have Kenshin along for dealings with the former shogunate lord.

"And you decided not to go alone - - why?"

Saitou smiled. A motion utterly devoid of humor or good will, that always had made Kenshin's skin crawl.

"He asked for you."

"Ah - -" Kenshin felt his gut flutter.

"Not specifically by name," Saitou added. "He wished for you to come because you were the one that saw his daughter's body. Or her supposed body, as the message was phrased."

"Oh." Perhaps not so bad as he thought. Or perhaps he was merely reaching for anything to fool himself into optimism. "Do you want to leave now?"

Saitou inclined his head. There was a carriage outside the gates, a uniformed police driver in the coachman's seat. The dojo was peacefully asleep behind him, aside from the ghosts that had kept him awake. Sano was asleep. Just as well, he thought. Sano had never been the best participant of calm, rational debate and anything other than calm, cool heads might offend Erizawa into withholding vital information. Sano would be angry at him for going without him - - but, they'd both get over it.

He took a long breath of cold morning air and stepped outside the gates, sliding them shut behind him. Into the carriage with Saitou then, who didn't disturb the air with banal talk, who sat silently staring either out the window or at Kenshin with speculation in his narrow eyes. Always thinking, Saitou. Always plotting out a situation to his best advantage. Always figuring how to get every last bit of usefulness out of a man before he discarded him.

Kenshin tried to ignore him. Tried to get that same blank expression on his face - - the emotionless one that deprived an enemy of knowing what he was thinking - - and couldn't quite achieve it. Didn't know whether he'd lost the ability somewhere along the way - - after four years of peace and happiness, or if Saitou just wasn't enemy enough anymore to merit it. Or maybe he was just too tired to find the strength - - maybe - -

He pressed a knuckle to his mouth, staring intently out the window, frustrated with the turmoil his thoughts had been dissolving into of late. He'd be good to no one if he couldn't pull himself together and start to focus. But it was considerably easier thought that done.

They reached Erizawa's estate and this time there was a servant waiting at the gate to usher them in. At the house, a woman met them, bid them good morning and led them to a fine, spacious tea room with broad doors open to lord Erizawa's garden. Erizawa himself sat on a cushion before the tea table, his morning kimono of the finest quality, his lined face composed into neutrality. This was a man who would never loose the ability to hide his emotions.

Kenshin bowed his head, little enough respect for a man in who's home they had been invited. Saitou did - - marginally. The woman urged them to settle onto cushions across from Erizawa, while her lord sat there silently, his hands planted on his thighs, his eyes fixed on his guests.

Tea was poured and while they drank it, another servant came in with a simple breakfast of rice and miso soup. It was only good manners to take breakfast in silence without broaching the business they had come for. Kenshin had no appetite. He managed a few mouthfuls of rice, a few swallows of soup and sat there afterwards with the warm cup of green tea in his bandaged hands, waiting while Saitou and Erizawa took their time finishing breakfast.

Finally, when they had finished and the servants came to clear away the remains, Erizawa spoke.

"What interest does the government have in my business beyond these fictional dealings with the Englishman Winter?"

Saitou shrugged. "You are a man of power. Men of power are always of interest to the government. What you chose to do with that power - - that is what may or may not be of interest to those who enforce the law."

"If I had dealt with this man and his backers - - our agreements would surely have been beyond suspect. I am not a Yakuza ruffian."

"No. I'm sure you're not," Saitou agreed. "And I'm sure your involvement - - your supposed involvement - - with this Englishman was beyond reproach - - you being the honorable businessman that you are. But, no businessman likes to have his affairs probed - - and I might be able to ensure that any - - suspicion - - of your involvement in this matter be erased, if you were to offer some bit of help in finding this elusive and treacherous Englishman."

"What assurances can you give me of such a thing?" Erizawa leaned forward, down to serious business now and Saitou smiled, having the fish on his hook and skillfully settling down to negotiation.

It went on like that for some while, the two of them discussing business with no mention of a murdered daughter escaping either man. Kenshin almost begin to wonder why he was here, why Erizawa had asked for him. Almost. Such men hid their motives well, he knew. Finally when some sort of satisfaction seemed to be reached on both sides, the old man motioned for fresh tea to be poured and waited while the woman scurried gracefully in to serve them and then retreated before speaking.

"Rumiko was my youngest daughter. She was to be married next year. To a scholar. I allowed this match because she wished it so - - and a father may be generous to a younger child. Because she knew the language of the west, she begged to do me the service of being my voice to the English. Being adventurous, she was eager to leave Japan in order to secure honor for this family. She had my seal and my authority to bargain with these men - - this English shipping conglomerate that backed this English cur. She would not have dishonored me or my name, so I believe you when you say she was murdered when she discovered this man's dealings with the Yakuza. She would have come to me directly with such treachery. She was a good daughter."

"I'm sorry," Kenshin said softly.

Saitou said nothing, running his finger idly around the rim of his tea cup, aching no doubt, for a taste of the tobacco that one hardly ever saw him without.

"You found her body?" Erizawa looked at him directly, dark eyes fixed upon him with all the intensity of Cat when she was begging for a scrap of fish.

"I did. In a canal, in Tokyo."

"And you knew it was this man, Winter, that murdered her - - how?"

Kenshin swallowed and said. "Not until later. I had - - met him earlier and invited him into my own home not knowing what he was. He stayed there for weeks before he took my wife - - I believe to pass off as your daughter to his backers. This was weeks ago and if we have any hope of catching up with him - - we need your help, lord Erizawa."

"You invited a murderer into your home?"

"Yes."

"As did I." The old man's eyes bore into him. The voice, which had been calm and neutral until now, dripped with venom.

Kenshin took a breath, not flinching from that gaze or that voice. He'd known that this man was too sharp not to put two and two together.

"Did you think I would not know?" Erizawa spat.

"No."

"What audacity, to come into my presence - - assassin."

Kenshin said nothing to that. What could a man say to such truth?

"I could have ten assassins of my own in here in an instant to take my rightful vengeance."

"Really?" Saitou said, giving up his pretense of guestly courtesy and fishing in a pocket for his cigarettes. "That would be a shame. A terrible waste of life."

Erizawa's eyes flickered to him, narrowing slightly as Saitou lit up a smoke. Saitou shrugged. "He doesn't kill anymore. I on the other hand - -"

"You come to me for aide and you bring - - this? Himura the Battousai who everyone has thought dead and gone these past years."

"I'm not," Kenshin said softly. "Not the Battousai anymore. Not for a very long time. Yes. It was my blade that killed your son. I was very young. I had a lord - - not unlike you - - unto whom I answered. I was given an order and I carried it out - - like any honorable samurai would. As you would have expected any of your samurai to do if you had given such an order. I did not enjoy it. I regret it. I am sorry. Deeply sorry."

Erizawa cursed at him.

"You did give orders of a like nature," Saitou said. "I know very well, you did. He's right that you would have expected the same. A samurai that disobeyed such a command would be expected to take his own life in shame - - or have it taken from him, if he balked at the honorable thing to do. Why hold a grudge against the sword when the hand that wielded it is long dead in the revolution? Why not hold your grudge against the man that dishonorably murdered your daughter?"

Erizawa slammed his palms down so hard on the table that the tea cups rattled. He pushed himself up and stalked to the open doors, then turned and stabbed a finger at Kenshin.

"I curse you for taking my heir from me. My first born. The man that ordered it is dead, so I have no one else to turn my anger upon, even though that anger be so many years old. I pray to the gods that you lose what is precious to you, _Battousai!"_ he spat.

Kenshin did flinch then, shivering despite himself. Angry of a sudden, despite himself. His fingers bit so deeply into his thighs that the flesh went numb. The man could wish him all the ills in the world - - but to wish them upon Kaoru and Kenji - - Almost he rose to do - - what, he had no clear notion, but Saitou's hand on his shoulder stayed him. Saitou's fingers hurt, pressing into bone and muscle and exerting surprising strength, considering Saitou was sitting as he was. Saitou didn't look at him, just put the cigarette out in a tea cup and smiled at Erizawa.

"Curse him all you want, but give me a location and names so that I can find this Englishman Winter and put a stop to his machinations."

"Where in_ hell _is Colombo?" Kenshin was not in the best of moods. He very much felt the need to bash in a few of Saitou's teeth. He had marks on his shoulder, he was sure, from Saitou's fingers biting into his flesh. Probably ones on his arm as well, from Saitou's hand on it the entire way out of Erizawa's presence. Like Saitou couldn't trust him to walk out of a room without causing trouble. Like Saitou expected him to flat out attack the old man for wishing his family ill.

He was angry, yes, but he hadn't lost complete control of his wits. So he simmered and slammed a fist into the door of the coach hard enough to make the wood crack a little and great, blinding streaks of pain to run up his arm from his hand and center in a spot just behind his eyes.

Saitou gave him a look and blew out a cloud of smoke that made Kenshin's eyes sting. "A British colony, I believe. Or a protectorate. In India or perhaps off its coast. Ceylon, maybe. I'll find out the details when I get back to police headquarters."

Kenshin took a breath, collecting himself. "Don't lay hands on me again, Saitou."

Saitou smiled and tilted his head. "Don't act like a fool, then. You've obviously been picking up bad traits from Sagara."

Responding to that in the way in which he wanted, would have propagated the claim that he was acting the brash fool. So he pressed his lips tight and stared out the window. "How soon can you arrange a ship?"

"What? Do you think you're going?"

Kenshin slanted him a murderous look.

"It is official government business." Saitou took a drag of his smoke.

"Then pretend I'm going at your behest instead of the other way around. I don't frankly care one way or another. I'll find passage on my own, if I have to and you and whatever schemes you've got going, can rot in hell."

"Kenshin, Kenshin - - you have no patience anymore."

"In this? No."

"I'll arrange passage, no fear." Saitou sighed. "I don't suppose you'll be able to leave that idiot Sagara behind."

Kenshin shrugged, looking back out the window. "If he wants to come - - he's welcome." Not to mention, that he didn't quite trust Saitou at his back. Sano, he trusted there. Sano - - he very likely needed there - - at least for the time being while he was less than whole.

Of course Sano was pissed. Sano being anything else would have come as a great shock. But Kenshin hadn't quite expected the open hand against the side of his head when he stepped back inside the relative security of the dojo. He'd been concentrating too much on what Erizawa had said - - about the prospect of Kaoru and Kenji being dragged to far off lands - - to pay much heed to who was coming out as he was coming in.

It wasn't near to noon yet, so Sano couldn't have been up for long, but long enough, apparently to achieve a degree of irritation that prompted him to violence at the sight of Kenshin.

"Where the hell have you been?" Sano bellowed as Kenshin hit the gate jamb and leaned there, with a hand against the side of his head over the throbbing hurt of impact. "You went to see that old shogun, didn't you? Without me! You dumbass, what were you thinking? I've been sitting here worrying my ass off over what trouble you'd gotten yourself into and did you give a shit? No. Couldn't care less about what Sano thinks, could you. I bet Saitou was there. He was, wasn't he? Saitou rates higher than I do, doesn't he?"

Kenshin held up a hand - - and thought for a moment he was seeing double, but then the double in question was about a head or more shorter than Sano, though the hair was just as dark and almost as long and spiky and the face every bit as agitated with the situation at hand.

"Yahiko. You're back," he stated the obvious, but then, his head was pounding a little and a man ought to be granted a little leeway to such mundane observations after having his brains rattled.

Yahiko, whom he'd last seen about three months past on his way out of Tokyo to expand his horizons, frowned, apparently agreeing with Sano's denunciations. Kenshin felt a great relief seeing him safe and sound, considering that he'd gone looking for Kenshin and considering what dangerous people that trail might lead him into the midst of. Yahiko was a master of the Kamiya Kasshin style of swordsmanship, he was wily and he was intelligent, but he was still a boy - - all of seventeen. And he still had a hot headed streak that had only dwindled slightly in the past four years.

"Sano's right, Kenshin, you shouldn't have left without telling someone - - what with everything that's going on," the young man said, sounding by far more rational than Sano and managing to make Kenshin regret slipping out of the dojo without a word. Well, not a tremendous regret, but a little.

"Sorry," he apologized and slipped warily past Sano, who was still glowering, and moved to clasp Yahiko's arm. Yahiko reached for him, then hesitated, eyes going wide at the sight of the bandages.

"Oh, Kenshin - -what happened?"

Kenshin glanced back at Sano. "Sano didn't tell you?"

"I only got back a little while ago and Sano's been bitching the whole time about you taking off without him."

"I don't bitch," Sano exclaimed. "And you're still too damned short to mouth off to me, so watch it, shrimp."

Yahiko's eyes narrowed with all the indignity of a young man accused of being anything but adult.

"I am not. I'm almost as tall as him." He jerked his chin at Kenshin and Sano burst out laughing.

"And this is something you're bragging over? Gods, I know girls taller than him."

"Shut up, Sano," Yahiko cried and Kenshin, after a glare at Sano for what he was most certain was a grave insult, decided that Sano and Yahiko had taken up their relationship exactly from the point that it had been broken off. He walked past them and they followed, still bickering in what one had to hope was a good natured way.

Yahiko really had matured a great deal in the last four years from the hotheaded youngster he had been. Kenshin never would have given him the sword if he hadn't. Never would have considered it, if he hadn't trusted the young man to keep a sane head and use it wisely. And all it took was half a morning in Sano's presence to make him revert. But it wasn't entirely a bad thing. Sano and Yahiko might fight and bicker and cross over the border of violent retaliation for each other's infractions, but it was all prompted by a genuine affection.

Yahiko had missed Sano a great deal. He'd moped about it more openly than any of the rest of them for the longest time after Sano had left. Kenshin had empathized silently, but he'd had other distractions to keep his mind from it - - namely Kaoru and the dojo and the rather immense and frightening step of matrimony.

And the world had gone on, as ever it did, with each of them following their own paths - - until fate decided differently and brought them back together here.

Yahiko had been in Nagoya these last few weeks and had come back when the rains had started, tired of the road and wanting a solid roof over his head for a while. He had the sakabatou with him, though he did not carry it outright for the most part, the police much stricter now a days about such obvious infractions of the law. The Meiji government was damned and determined that this era be a peaceful one and was ruthless in seeing that peace enforced. Yahiko was not a fool. He was not out to blatantly arouse unwanted interest. He did not go out of his way to find trouble - - though he was not adverse to it when it found him. He had a little more of the brawler in him than Kenshin ever had - - but then, Sano had been a big influence in Yahiko during those years when he was most easily influenced.

Kenshin didn't ask to see the sword - - though he wanted to. He wanted his fingers around that worn and familiar grip so badly he could taste it. It was only a blade and a backwards one at that - - but it was a weapon he could use without hesitation and without the guilt of breaking the vows he had made to himself so many years ago. That weapon might keep him from killing men - - he could make no such promises with any other. Instead he asked what sort of trouble Yahiko had been stirring up, in search of him and his family, being honestly worried about the answer and needing it to take his mind off the elusive sword.

"He's been pissing off Yakuza. Big deal. So have we." Sano interrupted before Yahiko had the chance to speak, the three of them half way around the yard towards the back. "What the hell did the old man have to say to you? And don't give me any bullshit answer, Kenshin."

Not only was Sano tending towards physical violence this morning, he was bossier and more imprudent than usual and Kenshin was most assuredly not in the mood to be bullied. He'd had enough of that from Saitou during the last leg of their visit with Erizawa.

He narrowed his eyes, concentrating on blocking out Sano's impertinent demands. Yahiko saw the look right off and backed down a little from his own eagerness to hear what Kenshin had to say. But then again Yahiko always had been a bit wiser in some things than Sanosuke.

"Don't give me that look, Kenshin." Sano plowed ahead, oblivious or perhaps very much aware and merely choosing to ignore Kenshin's obvious dark mood. Aside from perpetrating a little violence of his own, there was not a lot he could do to curb Sano's pestering. He contemplated that when Sano caught his arm, hauling him to a stop.

"What the hell happened?" Sano demanded.

Kenshin twisted his arm out of Sano's grasp, stepped around the taller man and kept walking to the back. He heard Yahiko caution Sano to let it be and heard Sano's answering curse before the sound of their footfalls following him resumed. He just needed a little while - - a little time to recover from Saitou's company on the ride back - - and the sure knowledge that his family was well and truly distant from him.

Colombo. Saitou thought that it was a port in Ceylon. Kenshin only vaguely knew where Ceylon was. Far enough away from Japan that they might as well be on the other side of the world. He'd never been outside of Japan. Never even to the mainland in all his years of wondering. It had never occurred to him to leave the land of his birth. He had never wondered for the sake of adventure, like Sano - - he'd done it out of repentance.

The woman - - the widow Hatayama was hanging fresh washed laundry in the yard when he reached the back, her daughter weeding the ornamental garden along the fence. He'd forgotten about them, when he'd come back here - - to the place that had always been the most informal, the most comfortable of all the dojo. They both paused when they saw him, and he hesitated a moment in his step, before nodding and continuing on to the room he had not been able to sleep in last night. He went now, because he had a purpose. He'd need things for a voyage. How long of a voyage he didn't know. He'd ask Sano when he was of a mood to talk again. Sano might know, having sailed to the mainland and back.

He looked about the room, melancholy at the sight of Kaoru's dress kimono and her teaching gi and hakama. At her extra sandals and her neatly folded scarves and ribbons and sashes.

He would find her. He would - - he tried to hold on to that conviction, but in the back of his mind, a timid little voice hinted at the possibility that he might not be able to. Or that he might be too late when he did. If he couldn't - - he'd never return here - - never set foot in this place again, without her here to fill it with life. He sank down, next to the low table where she kept her cosmetics and her ribbons and her mirror and combs. There was a dried arrangement in a vase, the flowers long withered and the leaves gone to brown. He stared at it, unfocused until a soft head pushed urgently against his arm and Cat demanded she be acknowledged.

He scratched under her chin, then down her back to the spot she liked best at the end of her spine. She purred and stepped daintily up onto his thigh to put her cold, damp nose against his jaw. Her whiskers were a feathery tickle against his skin. He shut his eyes and breathed, fingers immersed in cat fur. And for a few brief moments, it was enough.

And then he sighed and returned to the solid reality of here and now, and shooed Cat off his lap and did what needed doing, gathered what needed gathering and went back outside to face the world.

Or at least to face Sano's scowling countenance and Yahiko's patently worried one. They had settled on the porch a ways down, near the well and the goldfish pond.

"He's taken them to a place called Colombo," Kenshin said quietly, now that he could voice it out loud without his hands trembling or his voice breaking in frustration. Saitou is arranging passage - - as soon as he does, I'm leaving to go after them."

"We're leaving," Sano corrected, sullen and determined all in one.

"And me. You're not going without me," Yahiko announced.

Kenshin's eyes flickered away, and he wondered how many people he could drag into this - - how many people he could endanger in this desperate quest for his family.

"I am," Yahiko insisted, voice breaking a little as it vibrated between the tones of man and youth.

"I need to go and see Saitou," Kenshin said, avoiding the issue. "I need to find out about this place and his plans to get there."

"Okay." Sano prepared to rise, spitting out the stem of grass he'd been chewing on and dusting off his hands on the legs of his pants. "Then let's go and see the bastard."

"He's at the police headquarters, Sano." Kenshin pointed out and waited until the ramifications of that to sink in.

"So the fuck what? - - - - oh. Oh, okay, I get it. You trying to get rid of me?"

"No, Sano." Sano could be trying. He could be exhausting when his feelings got bruised. "I'm trying to keep you out of jail. I'm not going anywhere without you."

"What, like this morning?"

Kenshin cut him an irritated look, tired of tip-toeing around him. "Drop it, Sano. It's over. It's done. I don't need a guardian or a baby-sitter."

That was angrily said. Sano blinked and blinked again, then his lips turned up in an almost lazy grin and he shrugged rangy shoulders.

"Well, all you had to do was say," he accused, as if it were that easy. As if Sano ever backed off from anything because a body simply asked him to. Sano never took 'no' that easily and Kenshin nodded and warily walked past, expecting anything up to and including violence against his person. But Sano just shrugged and turned his attention to Yahiko, suggesting that the two of them go and investigate a few of the places that Yahiko hadn't been old enough to venture into the last time Sano had been in Tokyo. Did Yahiko have money for a game of dice? One shuddered to think what sort of trouble Sano could get Yahiko into in the mood he was in.

Chapter Fourteen

Sano started drinking early. Ideally it should have dulled the irritation. All it did was make him moody and more touchy than he'd started out. It was all Kenshin's fault. Damned irritating little snot, trying to leave Sano out of something that Sano had gotten himself firmly planted in the midst of. Going behind his back with Saitou of all people, to accomplish important tasks. Like he didn't trust Sano or - - gods forbid - - he was trying to protect him. Nobody protected Sagara Sanosuke. Nobody needed to. Who was the injured one here, after all?

"Sano? What are you muttering about?" Yahiko was staring at him. Yahiko who was almost grown up, whose face had grown out of its childish roundness, whose hands on his ceramic mug were long fingered and hard. He had the same eyes though. Even as a child, his eyes had been old. Maybe not wise, but street-smart and hard as obsidian.

"Nothing," Sano said and swallowed the rest of his beer. "C'mon." He rose, pushing himself away from the table. "There's nothing going on here this early. I want to stop by the_ Cross-eyed Lizard."_

"That's closed down," Yahiko said and Sano frowned, remembering many a night spent within the _Lizard's_ confines, drinking and gaming. He felt suddenly dislocated, hit with the knowledge that it was gone and he'd missed the passing. He wondered how many other of his haunts had evaporated.

It was afternoon. The sun was on its way towards the far horizon, making the shadows long and the air cool. Yahiko suggested another place and Sano lifted a brow at him.

"What do you know about places like that? They don't let kids in there."

"I'm not a kid," Yahiko ground out. "And that's bullshit anyway. They let anybody in who has money to blow. You think I was raised in a convent, you moron?"

"Moron?" Sano's hand shot out and smacked Yahiko up against the back of the head. The young man hissed and spun and shook a fist under Sano's nose. "I'm gonna kick your ass if you hit me one more time."

"You think you can?" Sano grinned at him. "You don't even have your stick sword. Oh, yeah, Kenshin gave you his ass-backwards blade, didn't he? You don't even have that, shrimp."

"Don't call me _shrimp!_" Yahiko snapped indignantly. "And you can't just carry swords around nowadays without somebody running to the cops and then you've got all sorts of explaining to do and it's just not worth it unless there's something really important up. And I don't need a sword to kick your lanky ass, Sanosuke."

"Yeah, so go ahead, take a shot."

Yahiko narrowed his eyes, gauging. "What? You gonna just stand there and let me hit you?"

"No sweat. I'll hardly notice, I promise."

"You fuck - -"

Sano grinned. Yahiko glared, wary now. The people passing them on the street cast them suspicious looks and gave wide berth.

"You know," Yahiko took a breath, another and the tension in his fists drained away. "You're probably right. Your head's so hard, that nothing could get through. I'd forgotten."

Sano snorted. "Ha! And look at you - - maybe you are growing up - - having the sense to back down from a no win situation and all."

"Fuck you," Yahiko grumbled.

Sano laughed and ruffled the young man's short, spiky hair, which gained him a glare and a few muttered comments on his ancestry. "So Kenshin says you've been doing a lot of roaming about, lately."

"Not as much as you," Yahiko said sourly, a little bit accusingly. "At least I remembered where home was."

"Yeah, well - - you didn't have the law after you."

"If you'd have bothered to go and try and straighten it out, you might not have. Kenshin would have called in some of the favors they owed him if you'd have let him - - he said as much."

"The hell with that! Like I needed him solving my problems. Like he wasn't - -" _part of the problem._ With Kaoru clinging like some lovesick leech and Kenshin ready to give up what autonomy he had and fall under the spell of everything she offered. Legitimacy, honor, home, family, responsibility. All the things he'd been lacking those long years as a rurouni. All the things he thought would make him whole. Maybe they had. Sano hadn't seen a problem with the way he'd been. But then, Kenshin always had been more critical of himself than anyone else ever could be.

They bickered back and forth, in what was generally a good-natured fashion all the way to the tavern Yahiko had suggested in the Shiba district, which sat at the very edge of Tokyo Bay. The smell of brine and fish was strong, the whistles and calls of merchants trying to off load the last of the day's catch filled the air. The bars and taverns here, at the busiest dock in Tokyo were always crowded and always filled with opportunity for a man with an eye for it. There were the taverns that catered to visiting seamen and the one's that discouraged foreign clientele, if only because the native patrons were menacing enough to make even the most boisterous foreigner think twice about slinking into to the dark, smoky depths.

Sano used to frequent such places on a regular basis. He used to be one of those menacing presences. He thought, with a little more drink, he just might fall into that category again. He begged a little more coin off of Yahiko, and found a raucous game of dice to join in. He won a few rolls and lost a few, managing to keep his investment constant. It wasn't as good a luck as he'd had on the road to Sendai, with Kenshin's ill-fated presence along to tip the scales of luck in his favor - - but it wasn't bad. The drunker he got, the better his rolls. Yahiko played for the first hour, before he lost the last of his money and then sat back to watch Sano milk what he could from what remained to him.

The crowd in the tavern grew thicker, the smoke fouler as more and more bodies finished with the day's work staggered in for drink or drug or game. There were a few women that offered themselves for a price that weeded amongst the men, the smell of their strong perfumes a contrast the to acrid odor of sweat and smoke.

Sano finally lost the last of his borrowed coin and reluctantly retreated from what had been up to the last, a vastly entertaining game. He slung a comraderdly arm across Yahiko's shoulders, ruffling his hair in a fashion that the young man hissed at and tried to shrug off. Yahiko's indignity aside, he was drunk enough from an afternoon in Sano's company not to have quite the grace presently, to escape from Sano's long arm. Which made Sano snicker at the kid's inability to hold his drink - - he was just like Kenshin, who couldn't down more than four or five beers without getting addle-brained. A man had to figure it was the weight, small men not having the tolerance that bigger one's possessed. If he'd had his rathers though, he'd have rather have had a drunk Kenshin at his side that a staggering Yahiko- - Yahiko made a mean, snarly drunk - - while Kenshin - - Kenshin got touchy and warm and tended to lean all over a body in search of support, which had been an alarmingly nice thing from the very first time Sano had managed to get him smashed, oh years and years ago.

"Back to the Dojo?" Yahiko asked, when they hesitated at a cross roads, the blue shadows of evening long and dark along the left hand side of the street. Might as well, Yahiko hadn't a coin left to his name and aside from stirring up trouble in one of the various bars they'd pass on the way out of the Shiba district and back on the path to Kamiya Dojo, there was damn little else left for them to do.

"Yeah, fine." He wondered if Kenshin were back. Wondered sullenly what plans he and that bastard Saitou had made, cloistered together behind the walls of the police station. Pushy, narrow-eyed bastard! Sano would just bet he'd pushed Kenshin to leave him behind.

A group of men walked towards then, down the side of the road where the shadows were weakest. Maybe six of them, a few staggering a little with drink. Easier to shift over to the shadowed side of the road than battle for right of way with a bunch of drunken day workers.

"Hey, boy." a voice slithered out of the alley on the dark side as they started to pass. "Imamura Kazuo sends his regards."

Just that and Yahiko tensed up, shrugged out from under Sano's arm, swinging about towards the alley in somewhat slurred battle readiness, grabbing at his back for a sword handle that wasn't there.

"What the fuck?" Sano said, turning about to see that the six drunken men, were not so drunk after all, and had crossed the street to block them in from the other side. Forms shifted out of the dark shadows of the alley. Another half dozen at least and armed.

"What the fuck do you want?" Sano demanded, shoving his hands in his pockets with careless disdain for the lot of these thugs.

"Imamura Kazuo is the local Yakuza boss." Yahiko supplied, eyes flickering about from man to man, shrewdly assessing who had what weapon. "I sort of roughed him up a little - - when I was looking for Kenshin."

Sano laughed. "Imamura Kazuo? I remember him. He used to be the old bosses' running dog. Little snot-nosed back-stabbing shit. What? He kill the old boss and take his place?"

"You shut up." One of the men snarled and rushed at Sano's back. Sano stepped out of the way, hands still in his pockets and slammed out a foot to smash the man's knee inwards.

"You make me." He grinned. Which pissed them off to no ends. With the silent efficiency of men used to secluded back alley assassinations they rushed. They weren't half bad, doing this for a living and all. Sano had to take both his hands out of his pockets almost from the start. Yahiko swam in and out of his sight, a swordsman without a sword, in the midst of a brawl, who still had a swordsman's speed and a swordsman's agility. Not like Kenshin. Nothing like Kenshin - - but not bad for a kid that had been playing with bamboo sticks the last Sano had seen him. He was probably right good with that sword Kenshin had given him. Probably could have dealt a lot more damage than he was dealing now with just his fists and his feet. He didn't take hits well though. Not from men almost twice his size. He staggered once when somebody got a glancing blow in from the side and Sano bullied his way close enough to cover him while he got his wits back together. Sano blocked a knife thrust and broke the attackers wrist for good measure.

They were mostly down, their Yakuza attackers when the remaining ones decided that Sano and Yahiko were a bit more than they could handle. The last three backed away, leaving the moaning bodies of their comrades scattered about the mouth of the alley.

"Not finished," one of them promised.

"Yeah, you just bring it on," Yahiko growled back taking a step forward, over a prone body.

"You tell Kazuo I'm back in town. Sagara Sanosuke. He'll know who I am. You tell him we've got some old business to finish and some new," Sano said waving a hand at the sprawled bodies, moving past Yahiko who was swaying a little, adrenaline mixing with alcohol, mixing with adrenaline.

"Yeah - - I'll tell him." And the man grinned of a sudden, eyes lighting just behind Yahiko. Sano swore and spun, but it was only in time to see the young man stagger, eyes wide. The man he'd stepped over had pushed himself to his knees. There was a dagger in his hand smeared with fresh blood. Yahiko hissed and slammed a fist, backhanded into the kneeling man's temple. The blade clattered to the ground. The others were running by the time Sano flashed a look back to see if they were going to continue the attack.

Yahiko had one arm wrapped about his waist, fingers pressed against his side. "This is why I don't drink," he complained. "I didn't even hear him get up."

"He get you bad?" Sano moved up, kicking the unconscious offender in the head for good measure.

"No - - just a scratch."

Which was a damned lie, as much blood was leaking out between Yahiko's fingers.

"C'mon." He steered the young man past the alley, away from the bodies, away from the curious who were just beginning to gather the courage to slink out and see what had happened. Yahiko staggered a block down the road and Sano swore, putting a hand to his back and feeling material soaked with blood. Fuck. He didn't need to deal with shit like this again. He really, really hated it when his friends bled all over him.

"You musta really pissed them off, for them to go to that much trouble," he said, just to evict a response. Yahiko was pale and breathing hard, a thin sheen of sweat on his skin.

"Yeah - - I was - - sorta - - in a bad mood." His left leg crumbled. Sano caught him, shoved an arm under his knees and scooped him up. Damned if the kid wasn't a few pounds heavier than Kenshin, height be damned. A little bulkier in the muscle department, a little thicker around the shoulders.

"Damnit - - Sano - - put me down! You'll - - drop me."

"No I won't. Listen, Megumi will fix this right up. It'll be fine."

"Tell - - him - - I'm sorry. I 'm sorry. I - - fucked up."

"You tell him, moron!" Sano snapped, but Yahiko's head had lolled, his eyes rolling back in their sockets, lashes half fluttering as he wavered on the very verge of fainting.

Megumi was not gentle in her accusations. She was blunt and angry and damned deadly with her verbal incrimination. And all that in the span of time it took for Sano to get Yahiko into the dojo and for her to very quickly assess the damage through the blood before she chased Sano away.

_How could you let this happen? You had to take him to those seedy places you frequent - - you had to get him drunk - - and yourself so drunk that you couldn't even fend off a few simple thugs? Your fault. This is your fault, Sagara Sanosuke! _There'd been more, before her attention was fully focused on removing the blood soaked clothes from the wound - - she'd demanded he take himself from her presence - - in that bone-chilling voice that she used when she was truly pissed off.

He didn't think telling her it had been more than a few simple thugs - - and that neither of them had been that drunk - - would be a good notion at the moment. At least he didn't think he'd been that drunk. He wasn't so sure, now that he was stone sober. She was right though, he should have taken better care - - He should have been watching the kid's back.

_Is he gonna be okay? _He'd asked, as the widow shooed him from the room, and Megumi hadn't answered, bent over Yahiko, immersed in her work.

So he padded outside to worry alone. And paced. And wished he had a drink now, when he truly needed one. And watched the sun disappear from the sky entirely and plunge the evening into moon drenched darkness.

Megumi didn't come out, though she sent the widow or the girl frequently enough for fresh water or clean cloth or more candles. Sano was afraid to stick his head back in and demand to know what progress had been made. Ha, he was afraid. He hadn't been afraid of those Yakuza thugs. There was damned little he was afraid of, save for ghosts and supernatural stirrings and - - and well, losing those few things that mattered in his life.

Maybe she was right. Maybe he was to blame, for not watching the kid's back. Maybe it was his fault for dragging Yahiko out and getting the both of them drunk and all because he was trying to prove some elusive point to Kenshin.

And where the hell was _he_, so late in the evening? Not still in Saitou's company. Certainly no sane person would put themselves through the deliberate hell of putting up with that bastard all the day long and well into the night. Unless Saitou had double-crossed him. Sano wracked his brain trying to figure out how or even why such a double-cross might be initiated. After all it hadn't been particularly Kenshin's presence that Saitou had been bitching about - - it had been Sano's. Which began the niggling little fear that they'd gone off without him. That Kenshin had bent to Saitou's pressure - - or his own misplaced notions that he needed to protect Sano - -_ idiot idiot idiot! -_ \- and gone and left him behind.

There would be hell to pay if that was the case. Once he tracked them down. Once he was sure Yahiko was okay - - -

Kenshin was tired. His head hurt. His shoulder did. His right hand itched under its bandages with contumacious intensity. It had been a long, frustrating, mind-numbing day. But he knew more than he had going into it. He knew the place they were going - - he knew how far it was and how long it would take to get there. He knew about the local culture and the local support that could be expected or not expected when they got there. He knew how strong a presence the English were on that island and how unlikely English forces were to help in the apprehension of one of their own blooded lords. Saitou had worked out a plan. Saitou always had plans - - always had back up strategies just in case - - always went into things with motives both clear and hidden. Kenshin didn't particularly care what the hidden ones where, though he knew - he absolutely knew that Saitou had other things on his agenda besides Kenshin's small family and extracting vengeance on Winter - - all he cared about was finding Kaoru and Kenji. First and foremost that, though the vengeance thing was a close second on his list of priorities.

He'd opted to walk home from the new police headquarters in the Kodenmacho district where most of the government offices were clustered. He'd needed the time to clear his head. Needed the time to get rid of the cobwebs that had been clinging for weeks now. He'd had a focus, but it had been tempered by weakness and injury. It was time to get it back. It was time, for at least a while, to push the those few idyllic years of peace and sedentary life away and reclaim what he had been. He was rusty and out of practice, he was realist enough to know that as truth, but the body never truly forgot.

It was dark when his sandals stirred the dust on the road leading home. The lanterns were lit outside the gates. He almost missed Sano, sitting there, outside the half open gates, he was so still in the shadow. Sano was never so still. Nor did he frequently loiter outside the dojo walls when there was more chance of supper inside. Kenshin stalled, frowning, noting Sano's dark eyes quietly fixed on his approach. Noting the dour curve of Sano's broad mouth and the way his big hands clenched and unclenched across his knees.

Oh, there was wrong here. Terrible, terrible wrong that made his heart hammer in his chest and his breath hitch in his throat.

"Sano - - what?"

Sano's eyes flinched away from him. Hurt. A moment and he looked back, gesturing with a short motion of his head towards the dojo and all that it contained. "Kid's hurt. M'sorry."

Kenshin blinked, wondering for a moment _which _kid. There were a number that frequented this place. But then, Sano generally only referred to the one as 'the kid', and Sano hadn't promised to take any other young person on his rounds with him that afternoon.

Kenshin stood there, blinking at the look of utter misery ghosting the shadows of Sano's face, then he swore softly and dashed past the gates. Into the yard and past the dojo proper towards the back where the private rooms were, where a wounded body might be tended.

He smelled the blood before he saw it. Oh, he hadn't been prepared for this. Not here and now when the enemy was long gone from this place. He stood in the doorway, staring with wide, horrified eyes at Megumi, sitting blood stained and weary next to Yahiko, who was pale as snow and still as death. The widow sat on the young man's other side, stained hands in her lap, dark, sorrowful eyes fatalistic. Dying and death were no strangers to such a woman. A woman that had lived through a husband's death and fought off her own daily for years on end against the mountain and the beasts that inhabited it.

"Megumi - - ?" he couldn't bring himself to ask. The ache in shoulder and head and hand intensified, thrumming to the point where he had to put a hand on the doorframe to keep from swaying.

She looked up at him, bitter eyed. "Alive. Barely. He's lost a great deal of blood. It was not an opportune place to be stabbed."

"Stabbed?" Kenshin narrowed his eyes, confused - - needing an explanation for all this - - blood.

"Its Sanosuke's fault," Megumi spat, clenching her small fists. Wetness made her lashes clump. "Everything was peaceful and he comes back and all hell breaks loose."

Kenshin blinked, not understanding. "How?"

"He dragged him out and got him drunk and gods know what else and can't even take care for him when those thugs attacked."

"Who? Who attacked?"

"I don't know. Yakuza, he said. If that's even true. If it wasn't just some bar brawl that he started and pulled Yahiko into with him."

Yakuza? He remembered that look of Sano's at the gates. Of misery and guilt. Of Sano taking blame for this - - and if it were Yakuza retaliating for Yahiko rattling their hierarchy searching for information about his whereabouts - -?

"Megumi - - Yahiko doesn't need a guardian. He's not a child anymore."

He said it softly, and Megumi hissed and stabbed a finger at him.

"He's not you! Understand? You giving him that damned sword doesn't make him you!"

"I know - -"

"You don't know anything. You defend Sanosuke's bumbling - -"

"Its not Sano's fault." He moved forward, went down to his knees next to her and put a hand on her trembling shoulder. She was tired and snappish because of it. "Sano doesn't lie. If he said it was Yakuza, then it was Yakuza. Yahiko went after them looking for me, so if there's blame to fall, it should be on me."

"You would say that," she said, softer.

"Will - - he be okay?" he asked. He should have asked sooner, but he'd been too busy trying to piece together what had happened - - trying to defend Sano against the accusations that Megumi had already no doubt tossed in his face.

"If I have a say," she said stubbornly.

"Then he will be okay," he said, trusting her abilities.

She gave him a look and called him a fool under her breath, but there was the hint of a smile lurking in her eyes, which reassured him.

She shooed him out, saying his presence was tiring. And he went gladly enough, never much good in sick rooms. He went back to find Sano, still outside the gates, haunched over his knees, staring at the star speckled sky.

"Why are you sitting out by the road?" Kenshin asked.

Sano shrugged.

"She say's he'll be okay. She says it was Yakuza who attacked you?"

Another shrug.

"Are you waiting for them to come here to finish it?"

"I wish they'd try."

Kenshin stood silently, waiting for something more and when he didn't get it, sighed and held out a hand. "Sano, please come inside. The neighbors will talk."

"Like I give a fuck." Sano canted a look up at Kenshin, at his proffered hand. "I should have watched his back."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I got him drunk. Was so damned happy to be prowling around my old haunts - - I let my guard down."

"You always let your guard down. It was bad luck. It isn't your fault."

"Megumi says it was."

Kenshin frowned, a little annoyed at the woman for throwing accusations about like so much festival confetti. Annoyed at Sano for this sulk when there were more vital things afoot. Annoyed - - just a little - - at Yahiko for getting hurt when Kenshin wanted badly to leave in pursuit of Kaoru.

"Then stay out here, if you believe that," he snapped. "My head hurts and my shoulder does and I'm not in the mood to deal with that - -" he waved a hand towards the dojo. "- - and your tantrums."

Sano's eyes got wide. Sano's mouth opened, offended. Kenshin had meant it to be offensive. Kenshin took a step back towards the dojo as Sano rose, thinking that if Sano hit him - - he was in too miserable a mood not to retaliate, and a fight inside the yard was far preferable to one in the street.

But, Sano didn't attack him, in any sense of the word. Just sniffed and shoved his hands in his pockets and padded past, leaving Kenshin to slide the gates shut and follow on his heels.

He sat down next to Sano on the porch by the kitchen, staring at darkness and listening to the fish hit the surface of the pond as they hunted mosquitoes. After a while, Sano queried.

"You with Saitou all day?"

"Unn." Kenshin nodded, distracted by the widow sliding open the door to the room Yahiko was in and quietly slipping out. Sano watched too, frowning. Afraid, Kenshin thought.

"She said he'd be okay," he said that for Sano's benefit, as much as for himself.

"If she says - -" Sano said, then after a while. "What'd you do - - all day with that narrow-eyed bastard?"

"Made arrangements. Gathered information - - you missed very little."

"I didn't say I was jealous or anything." Offended again.

"Of Saitou? Over me?" Kenshin said it in kidding. To lighten Sano's dark mood, but Sano's eyes widened and a heat rose on Sano's cheeks and he grumbled something incoherent and looked away. Which left Kenshin blinking and vaguely uncomfortable and recalling with embarrassing clarity the sensation of Sano's fingers through his hair and on the skin of his neck, of lying next to Sano with Sano's long arm firm around him and the pleasing smell of Sano's scent in his nostrils.

"I - - didn't mean - - that." That didn't come out right either, stammered and anxious. There were too many things of late that had him off his balance. Sano looked at him, eyes shadowed and tired, mouth twitching in anger or nerves. Kenshin ducked his head then, letting the hair slid over his face, taking escape behind that shield and silence.

The little girl surprised them both, padding up so quietly that Sano cursed and Kenshin flinched, fingers automatically reaching for a hilt that wasn't present at his belt. He was that jumpy, that a little girl could startle him.

She bowed her head and shuffled her feet, sensing the animosity in the air. Kenshin attempted a smile for her, to let her know it was not directed her way.

"Minako?" he asked.

"Miss Megumi says you should both go and find supper elsewhere. That she and mother don't have time to fix it. That you should go and eat and then come back and sleep because she doesn't need the two of you exhausted and irritable when she's exhausted and irritable."

Kenshin blinked at her no doubt word for word recital of Megumi's message. Sano did. Sano recovered quicker.

"I don't have any money to eat out. Do you?"

Kenshin shook his head mutely.

The little girl held out her small hand. There were enough coins there for a miserly supper.

"Miss Megumi said neither of you would have money and to give you this."

"She did, did she?" Sano said wryly and reached across to take the coin before Kenshin could.

"We probably shouldn't - -" Kenshin said. " - - just in case she needs us."

"She doesn't need us. She wouldn't have sent the little girl to chase us out otherwise." Sano was more than willing to flee. Sano grasped him under the arm and pulled him up, not willing to argue the point, but considerate enough not to pull on the aching shoulder.

They went to the Akabeko, with the twin objective of a decent meal and letting Tsubame and Tae know about Yahiko. Tsubame would be distraught, being very much affected where Yahiko was concerned. Kenshin told her gently that the young man had been injured and Tae sent the girl off to the dojo post haste, wisely seeing that she'd be no good at the restaurant until she saw that Yahiko wasn't on the verge of death. Kenshin hoped that he wasn't. He had to trust Megumi.

Sano weaseled a better meal out of Tae than the money they had would have normally bought. He sat there savoring it with an almost libidinous expression on his face, and finally after the serious task of eating had been conquered, he sighed and said.

"That'll be the last one of those for a while, huh, Kenshin."

"Why do you say?"

Sano snorted. "Don't even. When's the ship leave? Tomorrow? You had that look on your face coming down the street of a man about to say good-bye to home. Weren't planning of skipping out on me, were you?"

Kenshin sighed, pushing the last dregs of food about on his plate with a single, forlorn chopstick. "No. I told you I wouldn't."

"So when?"

"Saitou arranged passage on a Dutch trader. It leaves at high tide tomorrow night."

"Ha. Told you. Try and hide things from me, will you?"

"I wasn't hiding things."

"You didn't mention it. Just forgot to spill an important fact like that, did you?"

"There were obvious distractions, Sano," Kenshin said dryly.

"Humph." Sano reached over and snagged a leftover chunk of beef from Kenshin's plate, a furrow between his brows that had nothing to do with the eminent completion of their late supper. Still very much worried over Yahiko. Still holding onto the guilt that Megumi had planted. Or perhaps it had been there before the woman had voiced it. Telling him again it was not his fault, would be a waste of breath. Sano would believe what Sano wanted to, regardless of what Kenshin tried to impress upon him.

They went back home. The night had brought rain with it. There had been a few days there, Kenshin thought wryly, where they had been dry. But a storm was brewing now and it brought with it strong wind and cold rain. He hoped, if it were a persistent one, that it did not interfere with the departure of the ship tomorrow.

Sano had wanted to pay a visit to the Tokyo Yakuza. Had been very adamant about it, spouting names of men that needed to be taught a lesson in who to mess with and who not to mess with, that Kenshin had never heard. Sano always had skimmed the borders of the underworld. Sano knew people and things that truly honest men were ignorant of.

"No," Kenshin had said. "If we leave tomorrow and we've started a war with the Yakuza - - who will protect our friends when retaliation comes? I'll speak to Saitou. I'll see that they're protected."

"You trust him?"

"I trust him enough. He won't let me down if I ask that of him."

Sano had been dubious. But Sano had conceded.

At the dojo, they found Megumi asleep with the widow and her daughter, while Tsubame sat watch over Yahiko. With Yahiko in Kenji's room, which had once been his - - and the girls in the spare room, there was only Kenshin and Kaoru's room available. And again, Kenshin found that space uncomfortable. But there was little help for it now, with the wind blowing rain onto the porch and rattling the panels of the doors.

Sano shook himself like a dog, spraying water on the floor in a wider arc than that which simply dripped from him. Kenshin opened his mouth to reprimand him, then shut it, thinking it hardly mattered. Kaoru wasn't here to complain about a little water. It was hardly worse than when Kenji would rise early at the sound of rain and run into their room to pounce upon them while they still slept, a wet and laughing interruption of dreams.

"Do you want a dry robe?" he asked, hands shaking of a sudden, nerves shattered by the sudden attack of fond memory.

"Sure." Sano had shed his jacket and his dripping headband, tossing the both in the corner by the doors.

Kenshin gave him a dry cloth to dry himself and one of his own plain house robes. It would be too small, but it would do until Sano's clothes were dry enough to put back on.

"Don't just leave them in a pile there," Kenshin murmured. "They'll never dry."

He caught a glimpse of Sano shedding his trousers, of Sano bending to wipe the moisture from his body before slipping the robe on. Ignore it and take care of his own wet self. Loosen his belt and step out of the soaking hakima. Shed the only marginally less wet kimono and hastily run a cloth over his body before donning the dry robe. He leaned over and twisted his hair to wring out excess water. It was past his shoulders now, a handful of weeks having seen respectable growth. He'd have to cut it in the front a bit, otherwise it would blind him when he could little afford to be blinded.

Sano was staring at him. Sitting against the wall by the door, shadowed eyes fixed upon him.

"Sano?" he asked, because there was something about the intensity of the stare that made him - - nervous.

Sano flinched and looked away, folding his hands together between his knees. He shook his head, shuffling aside the query.

"There's - - a bed roll," Kenshin offered, hesitantly.

"Nah," Sano said. "I don't know if I'm much up for sleeping. I'll sleep on the ship."

"Oh." Kenshin felt the same. Felt a distinct abhorrence for lying down and shutting his eyes when there were so many things to inspire nightmare. But he was tired. He felt it in his bones. Felt it in the tremor of his muscles. Megumi said he was nowhere near to being healed. That he needed weeks of rest to begin full healing. He supposed he'd get it on shipboard. Weeks and weeks until they would reach their destination. Too long to go without sleep. Too long to go without nightmares. And not all of them about Kaoru and Kenji.

Might as well shut his eyes now and let them come. There was no stopping them anyway. He wouldn't recall the majority come morning. He never did. Just the shadowed remnants and the unease they left behind.

"Kenshin?"

He glanced to Sano. "Humm?"

"Sorry."

Not back to that again. He was too tired to chase away Sano's guilt. "It's not your fault, Sano," he breathed, weary and soft.

"Not that." Sano's mouth twitched in annoyance. "About - - you know - - not trusting that you wouldn't run off without me. I was pretty pissed off - - and well - - well, it was stupid, because I know you wouldn't, since you promised and all."

"Oh." Kenshin almost smiled. He padded over to the wall and slid down next to Sano. "I don't suppose you have a lot of reason to trust me there. I've done it before, no?"

Sano shrugged. "Yeah and maybe you might have had some justification. Back then I was a lot more talk than I am now."

"Of course."

Sano's eyes narrowed a little. "You don't have to agree so quickly. I wasn't that much talk. I could back it up - - I can just do it better now."

"I know. You've improved a great deal. It's more than merely physical."

"Yeah? You can tell that? How? I mean - -" Sano paused considering. "Are you saying that I acted like a fool back then? Is that what you're saying?" Sano leaned towards him, emitting just a touch of offended threat.

"Sano - - calm. Please. No, you act very much the fool now - - and jump to just as many false conclusions - - it's just that you can tell when a man - - has gained something. Some insights perhaps, that help to make him more than he was when he was a boy."

"You never knew me when I was a boy," Sano growled, obviously still undecided on whether to take this conversation as a serious affront or not. Kenshin refrained from mentioning that Sano had been eighteen when they'd first met and all appearances aside, he'd been a great many years older than that.

"Of course." He tried to look innocent of insult.

"Hummph." Sano canted him a sideways look. "The only reason I'm not gonna kick your ass for all of those non-slurs is because it would wake up the house and they probably need the sleep more than we do. But I owe you one."

"Ah, I'll keep that in mind."

"You should." Sano leaned his head back against the wall, a grin pulling at his lips.

Sano made the uneasiness go away. Sitting there, shoulder to shoulder, Kenshin didn't feel the depression as acutely as he had. The wind and the rain buffeted the world outside. A little water still pooled at the door, but not much. The candle flickered and he shut his eyes, lulled by Sano's steady breath and the constant patter of the storm.

He came awake of a sudden, hardly aware that he'd fallen asleep, his cheek warm where it had been pressed against Sano's shoulder, Sano's arm a heavy weight over his own. He shook that off, startled to his knees and looking for a weapon that he didn't have as someone rattled the doors and slid them open on the tracks.

It wasn't attacking Yakuza or murdering Englishmen or mountain bandits - - it was a heavily listing young man, skin pallid and sweat sheened.

"Yahiko?" He cried, scrambling to his feet, to take hold of the boy's arm. Yahiko was trembling slightly, clammy to the touch, eyes a little glazed but determined for all that. "You shouldn't be up. Where's Tsubame?"

"Asleep. She fell asleep. I didn't know how long I'd been - - I was afraid you'd left."

"What the fuck are you doing up?" Sano was slower to wake than Kenshin. He sat there, with his long legs sprawled out under the too short folds of Kenshin's robe and glowered up at the both of them.

"Sano - - I messed up, huh?"

"You should not be here," Kenshin said firmly. He felt the bandages under the thin material of Yahiko's robe. The morning outside was gray and moist. The storm had passed with the night. "Let's get you back. Miss Megumi will be furious."

"I'm sorry. I wanted to help - -'

"Yahiko - -" Kenshin said warningly, as the young man shifted, trying to disentangle himself from Kenshin's grasp.

"Kenshin - - I want you to take this back - -" He brought his hand around from behind the door frame, fingers clutched around the painstakingly polished, dark wood of a sheath. Kenshin's eyes fixed on the familiar grip of a well-worn hilt. He tore his gaze away, wrapping an arm about Yahiko's waist and forcibly turning him on the path back to Kenji's room. The door down the way slid open before he could safely get Yahiko that short way down the porch, and Miss Megumi stuck her head out. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed in annoyance.

"And just what, do you think you're doing?" She demanded.

Kenshin blanched, feeling that threatening question aimed at him.

"And what are you doing with that, Yahiko?" She flung a second question.

"Oh, quiet woman, he was giving it to Kenshin." Sano strode out onto the porch, looking ridiculous in Kenshin's robe, arms and legs protruding from the edges.

"Don't tell me to be quiet," she snapped, marching up to Kenshin and Yahiko and snatching the sword out of the latter's hand to toss it without care at Sano. "Neither one of them is fit to use it."

The noise woke Tsubame, who was devastated at falling asleep when she should have been watching Yahiko. She wrung her small hands and apologized profusely to Megumi, scolding Yahiko softly in-between. Yahiko was plainly distraught over her upset, but his eyes kept drifting to Kenshin, worriedly.

"I gave it to you," Kenshin said softly.

"You need it. You need to get them back."

He couldn't argue that. He'd spent a good deal of the past weeks wishing it was back in his hands. He might have saved himself a great deal of pain and effort if he'd had it. But he'd given it to the young man in good faith - -

"He's an idiot, kiddo. He'll take it and thank you for it when his brain starts functioning again." Sano shoved the sakabatou at Kenshin's chest and bullied his way between him and Yahiko, dropping to his knees next to the boy's pallet. "Listen, I'm sorry I didn't watch your back as good as I should have. Damned Yakuza are slippery as snakes and - - well the one just got past my notice. Don't you be going after them again without some damned heavy backup, got it? Which means not until the two of us get back, okay? Let it ride and until then, Kenshin's promised to get Saitou to have some of his police buddies keep them off you. If I come back and find you've done something stupid, there's gonna be hell to pay."

The young man blinked, a little dazed from fever or blood loss. Kenshin could sympathize, having only recently been there himself.

"Yahiko - - thank you. I'll bring them back." Kenshin knelt next to Sano, the sword clutched in both hands. The young man smiled and held up a hand. Kenshin grasped it, squeezing gently. Sano's bigger hand covered the both of theirs and pressure was stronger, but it was good pressure. It transferred Sano's boundless energy through him when he needed it. When Yahiko's injury made him sick and the prospect of a long sea journey had his stomach pitching and him not even on the deck of the boat yet.

Yahiko grinned through the pallor, a hint of that indomitable sparkle in his dark eyes.

"I know. I'll expect you back in no time."

Chapter Fifteen

Moonlight glinted off of Tokyo Bay. A hundred masts swayed like bamboo in the wind, straight and narrow and interlaced with rigging. A few thicker columns of steam ship smoke stakes broke the delicate tracery of masts. It was no less congested on the docks at night than it was during the heat of day. Ships came and went at all hours. There was always work to be had at the harbor.

Megumi came to see them off. A solitary well wisher that carried the hopes of Yahiko and Tsubame and Tae and the widow and her daughter and anyone else who had a care whether Kaoru and Kenji lived or died. Much less Kenshin and Sano. She yammered at Kenshin to take care for his wounds and pressed a pouch of salves and bandages into his keeping. He had that simple smile on his face during her lecture. The one that hid all the layers of whatever true emotion he was feeling under a veneer of good nature. He had a light sack of belongings and the sword shoved through his belt. Sano had less, having abandoned his worldly belongings years ago and never having stopped long enough since to collect more.

When Saitou strolled up the docks, trailed by two uniformed officers carrying a large trunk, Sano frowned. Megumi did, being a sensible woman. Saitou ignored the both of them, sparing Kenshin a nod, and lifting an eyebrow at the presence of the sakabatou before turning his attention to the Dutch merchanteer that rocked gently in the water next to the dock. He waved a hand at his flunkies and they carted his chest up the lowered gangplank and onto the ship.

Trapped on a ship with Saitou for weeks. Saitou who had gotten damned chummy with Kenshin of a sudden, when he'd never had much care for his company before. The notion made Sano slightly queasy. The touch of Megumi's fingers on his arm distracted him from dour thoughts of Saitou. Her dark eyes were intent. Worried. She urged him aside a little, when Kenshin went to talk to Saitou at the foot of the gang plank.

"I don't trust that man." She whispered.

Sano sniffed, his thoughts on the subject of Saitou well known to all and sundry.

"I don't trust him not to lead you into trouble. He doesn't care about Kaoru or that child. He doesn't care about either of you. Don't let him talk Kenshin into something suicidal."

"If I can help it." He said, staring under the cover of his lashes at Kenshin and Saitou.

"He won't be thinking of himself - -" she said. "- - self-preservation won't be the first thing on his mind when he's focused on that girl. It never has been."

"No." Sano had to agree.

"I want her and the child back - - but I'd prefer if the both of you survived the experience."

He shrugged.

"It wasn't your fault, Sano." She finally said. "About Yahiko. I'm - - sorry I said it was. I was wrong."

He looked at her. Really looked, instead of diverting half his attention to the ship and the cop and the redhead. Apologies from Megumi were few and far between. He'd rated very few of them in the time he'd known her. He didn't quite know how to respond, so he shrugged and gave her a crooked grin.

"S'okay. I've been accused of worse things."

"Yes, but you weren't _actually_ at fault here." She smiled back and he took the insult as it was intended. Light hearted and far from hurtful.

All the cargo was loaded and the mate called down for any stragglers to board and Sano strolled towards the gangplank with Megumi trailing on his heels. Saitou had already boarded and only Kenshin remained to give one last farewell to Megumi and Tokyo and Japan.

Up the plank after that, the ship's crew eager to pull it up behind them. They stood at the rail along with the dozen or so other paying passengers to watch the dark shore drift away. The lights of the harbor grew smaller and smaller, winking fireflies that rolled with the sway of the ship. Saitou stood down the rail from them, a solitary figure casually sucking at his cigarette.

So they were on their way. Departing from the land of his birth yet once again. It wasn't as exciting this time - - his gut wasn't filled with as many churning butterflies. Maybe because this time he wasn't afraid to leave. Oh, he'd been gung ho enough about it the first time - - ready to set out on his grand adventure - - but the thought of leaving everything he knew and loved behind to delve into the mysteries of the great wide world had been sobering and frightening. But anything that raised the hackles on the back of Sano's neck - - was worthy of facing head on. Fear was a thing to be challenged and beaten down into submission.

He wasn't afraid this time. He wasn't sad. He wasn't leaving anything vital behind. He didn't even feel the need to stand and watch the shore recede and might not have, if Kenshin hadn't remained by the rail.

"The first stop's - - what? Manila?" he asked, already jumping weeks ahead. Kenshin nodded, eyes nothing but shadow under the fall of his hair and the night. Kenshin's hands were light, graceful things on the rail, but there was a tenseness about him that belied his casual stance.

Sano knew the route. First stop at the Philippines then around the Dutch East Indies making a stop or two on the way before they hit the open waters of the Indian Ocean and headed up towards the southern tip of India off which the island of Ceylon sat. A long sail. A long time to be cooped up on a boat with Saitou. Maybe Kenshin could keep blood from being shed between the two of them.

"What's the furthest you've been from home?" Sano asked.

"Not as far as you." Kenshin admitted. "Outside of Japan? I went to the coast of Sakhalin once from Hokkaido during the revolution on an - - errand - - for the man who was my lord at the time."

"An errand?" Sano lifted a brow.

"Don't ask."

Sano didn't. Kenshin didn't like talking about those days and the sorts of errands he'd been asked to complete.

"You know - - for someone who was a rurouni for ten years - - you kept yourself on a short leash."

"I never had the desire to leave Japan. I suppose that even though I fought for the revolution - - in my heart I always held with the old order's isolationist views. I don't like all the things the foreigners have brought with them. I don't like the changes I see in the port cities. I suppose I don't like a great many things - - which means absolutely nothing, because no one can stop change."

Sano supposed not, but the way Kenshin said it, it sounded like he was foretelling doom and destruction - - he was distraught and not bothering to hide it from Sano as he had from Megumi. Sano didn't ask why, because Kenshin would only deny it and a body had to feel a little honored that Kenshin trusted him enough to show something other than his gaming face.

When the shore was nothing but blackness and the ocean a dark vastness that a body could sense but not see, the ship was truly on its way out into the waters of the Pacific, heading out into the currents that would take it south towards the multitude of islands that sat off the coast of the mainland. The ship rode low in the water, heavy with tea and rice and other exports that it would trade along the way.

Japan faded away in the distance, and the world beckoned from the darkness ahead.

Kenshin did not experience sea sickness. He most certainly did not. The queasiness in his gut was in no wise from the constant pitch of the sea and the deck under his sandals. If anything it was from the questionable ship's fare and a worry he couldn't stop from gnawing at his insides. There was little enough to do to relieve it. He was on his way on the trail of the man who'd taken his family and yet the optimism refused to come. It hadn't come since he'd set foot back in Tokyo. He'd been so fueled with determination before that he'd hardly had the time to fall prey to doubt.

Perhaps it was the inaction. Perhaps with nothing to do but wait, helpless at the whim of the ocean and the winds - - all the dark thoughts gleefully took advantage of the lack of momentum and crowded their way in. Regardless, he sank deeper into a queasy sulk, spending a great deal of the time in the small cabin he shared with Sano and Saitou.

Two sets of stacked bunks with a narrow aisle between them. Two sea lockers at either side of the door. One small port that barely let in the gray light of day. It was a dismal room, with the ceiling so close to his face when he slept - - having been relegated the top bunk by reason of his smaller statue - - that he began to feel pangs of claustrophobia.

Sano tried to draw him out into what activity he had found. Gaming with the crew, fishing off the rail with a few of the other passengers. Not much to do on a merchanteer vessel, save do the exercises Megumi had advised to loosen the stiffness in his hands. Repeatedly. She'd said in moderation, not to tear healing flesh. He couldn't stand moderation when his fingers were clumsy and his hands had little strength.

Saitou read. And smoked. The cabin was more often than not filled with the foul stench of tobacco. Upon complaint Saitou would lift a brow, take a long drag off his cigarette, contemplate the issue for a moment, then blow a lungful of smoke into the room before turning back to his journal. It drove Sano to distraction. Sano bitched day and night about Saitou, wanting very much to steal the man's store of cigarettes and toss them into the ocean. Kenshin cautioned against it, not particularly wanting a fight within the crowded confines of the cabin. Or anywhere else on the ship for that matter.

Days turned into a week and there was nothing but water and gray sky surrounding them. Nothing to alter the environment. Not even a stray bird to break up the monotony of the sky. He wondered how Kenji had taken to such a long trip, the child never having experienced more than a few boat rides down the canals outside Tokyo. Had he been frightened? Or had he shown the bold, fearless face he usually did? Kaoru would have encouraged the latter. Kaoru would have held her head high and faced the adversity of the Englishman's captivity with courage and pride. But - -

\- - But, so much vast ocean with no landmarks to mar it - - it was disheartening.

"There's a game in crew's quarters." Sano padded up to him at the rail, a tall shadow on the deck in the moonless night. Sano did not speak the language of the crew, but he'd managed to work his way into their good graces nonetheless. The rules of dice were the same everywhere for the most part. They gambled for pittances, partaking of the game more to relieve the boredom than for any gain. Kenshin had sat in on a few, listening to the unintelligible banter of the crew - - picking up Dutch words here and there - - mostly keeping Sano's company.

"No. Not tonight." He preferred the darkness and solitude.

"And not last night and not the night before. You're becoming as unsociable as Saitou, Kenshin." Sano complained.

He didn't answer that. Not having a reply that would have satisfied Sano. He shut his eyes against the constant flutter of wind and hair and salt spray and waited for Sano to go away.

Sano didn't go away. Sano slid up to the rail next to him, and stared out into the pitch. Silent for a long while, just a sturdy, solid presence at his shoulder.

"Will you stand here all night?" Sano finally wanted to know.

Kenshin had stood here, at the aft rail a good many nights, while Sano found other entertainment. It was better than spending time in Saitou's company or trying to read one of Saitou's dry journals or - - gods forbid, engaging the other Japanese passengers in conversation, when he hardly wanted to speak to the people he did know.

"Its not a bad place to be. The wind is cool."

"Fritz says there's a storm brewing." Sano said. Fritz being one of the few crewmen who spoke a spattering of Japanese. Kenshin beetled his brows, not liking the sound of that.

"He says maybe it'll hit by dawn or thereabouts. We'll be at the port in Manila in less than a week. Only a day's layover, I hear. Fritz says there are games in that port that you wouldn't believe. They bet on anything."

"Ah - - your notion of heaven. To bad you have no money."

Sano snorted softly. "I have a little. I'd like to get that narrow eyed bastard into a game or two and win some of the stash he has."

Kenshin canted a dubious look Sano's way. "With his poker face? You'd come away with nothing but a scowl, Sano."

"Ha, you think he could out play me? Just because a man's quick with his hands doesn't mean luck runs his way. Just look at your gaming luck!"

No good would come of replying honestly to that. Engaging Saitou in any sort of game of chance would be a dangerous and risky venture and one best avoided.

"Come play a few rounds of cards with us. There's a new game I've learned, I'll teach you."

"Why bother, with my luck?"

He could see the ghost of Sano's grin in the darkness. "Ah, but as bad as you play, it means more luck will gather at my feet. Come help me win, Kenshin."

An arm went around his shoulders, urging him away from the rail. He let go his purchase, relenting. Sano took a step sideways to keep his footing when the ship dipped precariously into a deep swell. Oh, a storm was most definitely coming, if the mood of the ocean was any indication.

"It may hit sooner, the storm." Kenshin said, his shoulder to the wall of the deckhouse where they'd both caught their balance, Sano's arm having slid down his back in a pointless attempt to steady him. Kenshin's sea legs had developed within minutes of stepping onto the ship. It was only his stomach that refused to always adjust to the undulating environment.

"Sano?" a question, warily asked, since Sano neglected to disengage the arm, since Sano's body was a warm, hard presense against his own. Too close for propriety. Too close for comfort, if the racing of his heart and the goosepimples all along his skin were any indication.

"I've never rode a storm out at sea." Sano admitted. "It was always smooth sailing before. Cramped and miserable - - but smooth."

"San - -" Another pitch of the deck and Sano splayed his legs, pressing Kenshin's back to the deckhouse wall, the one arm still wrapped about his back, the other flat against the wall.

"You okay," Sano whispered, his breath a warm touch against Kenshin's pallid temple. "You're trembling . . ."

He wasn't. He did not broadcast his failings so blatantly. He had more control of his body than that. But he couldn't gather his thoughts. They scattered like foam on the waves and all he could focus on was Sano's hand pressed against the small of his back and Sano's lean body weighing against his own with as much intimacy as a man might press against a woman. But it was Sano - - and Sano probably didn't mean anything by it - - it was the pitch of the ship and the threat of going over the rail at the increasing roll of the deck that had Sano foolishly believing that Kenshin needed his hands on him to help with balance, when Kenshin could have walked that rail, pitch or no pitch and kept his footing.

"Sano - - I'm fine." He twisted a little and slipped out from under Sano's arm. Got himself a step or two away - - far enough to breath and to collect his wits - - it was Sano. Sano. Sano. And no reason to find offense or upset in what was offered in all good faith as friendly support. "We'll go and play your game - - if they still are with a storm coming in."

Sano shrugged, face a neutral mask in the shadows. "They're sailors. The storm is no big deal to them - - not until it hits at any rate."

The storm spilled over them a few hours before dawn. A squall of great magnitude that had the decks awash with churning sea and the hatches battered down tight as drums.

One of the lesser masts cracked from the force of it. They heard it all the way belowdecks, braced in their small cabin and a man couldn't help but wonder if the ship had split asunder and would drag them down with it to a dark and watery grave. But it hadn't and come morning the storm subsided and the sailors swarmed the deck to take account of the damage.

"That split mast will keep us in port a few days longer than planned." Saitou had come from talking with the first mate. Saitou spoke Dutch almost flawlessly. He spoke English passingly well and a spattering of French.

"Well, that's not a bad thing." Sano was thinking of the gambling and the rumors of a reckless and wild port town.

"Its not a good thing." Kenshin thought of what might happen to innocent lives with two more days between him and them.

"Idiot." Saitou commented before lighting up, and one wondered who the comment was directed at. Sano took immediate offense, glaring, so Kenshin decided to let the insult lay at his feet.

"What, just because I want to see a bit of the world? When's the last time you got out of the same old pasture, you narrow-eyed fuck?"

Saitou took a drag of smoke and commented to Kenshin. "If you don't feel it absolutely necessary, keep the sword here. I've heard tell that the Spanish authorities are a bit touchy about such things. Even more so with the Americans sniffing around, trying to get their hooks into the islands."

"I asked you a question." Sano was not to be ignored. Saitou gave him a look , eyes conveying just how little concern he had for questions posed to him by Sano.

"It would be a waste of breath for me to name all the places I've been that you haven't, stupid boy."

"I am not a _boy_ \- - and you have no idea how many places I've been."

"Nor do I care." Saitou flicked ash over the rail and proceeded to walk away.

"Sano - - let it be. Please." Kenshin put a hand to his chest when he would have pursued the bickering.

It was not so startling a thing, fingertips and palm on the smooth skin of Sano's chest, here in the gray light of day, as it had been covered in solitary darkness. He hardly flinched at all, at the touch. Sano didn't, distracted by his ire. Kenshin pulled his hand back when Sano stopped pushing against it, and let it fall to his side, wiping his palm on the side of his hakama to chase away the tingling.

"That bastard - -" Sano muttered, casting dark looks down the debris littered deck in Saitou's wake. "He's always such an ass."

"It's his nature."

"What? To be an ass. Is that like an inborn trait - - or is it learned?"

"Learned, I think." Kenshin almost smiled, the first one since he'd boarded this ship. "But, I've never met his parents - - so I could not say for sure."

"You mean he wasn't spawned by demons? Oh, that's news."

He did smile then and Sano did, drawn out of his irritation.

It was a gray morning when the ship sailed into the port of Manila. Mist and low lying clouds made a milky soup of the harbor. Only the indistinct forms of ships and jutting masts could be discerned through the fog. Clothes became damp and heavy from the moisture in the air. Closer to dock, and hundreds of small, canvas covered houseboats could be seen, crowded together around wooden pylons, about the edges of the dock where there was no room for bigger vessels. Perhaps it was the fog, with soaked into every surface, bringing out the worst of ingrained odors, but the harbor smelled of rotting wood and machine oils, fish and human refuse. It made a body used to clean sea air, curl his lip in distaste. Sano made a few vocal complaints with which Kenshin silently concurred.

The city was under Spanish control, though it was a tentative one, what with American interest in the islands. The Spanish port authority took stock of the ship when she pulled into dock, assessing the cargo and what taxes to levy on it. The captain contracted for repairs on the mast and chased the paying passengers off board for the duration.

So they were confined to the dubious pleasures of the city for the estimated two days it would take for the mast to be replaced and cargo to be offloaded and sold and new cargo bought to fill the ship's empty belly. Saitou stepped off the gangplank dressed very much like a moderately well to do businessman, in a western cut suit and jacket with a stiff white shirt collar and a narrow, loosened tie about his neck. He looked the part. Of a corporate shark out to maneuver some tedious business arrangement. He had a small satchel in hand, but like he'd advised Kenshin, he was apparently unarmed. Or as unarmed as Hajime Saitou ever was - - weapons not withstanding.

"I'm told," he said to Kenshin. "That there are adequate inns a few streets in from the docks that don't smell so completely of the harbor."

"Oh, please don't tell me I have to share another room with you." Sano complained. "I've got more smoke in my clothes than you have in your lungs."

Saitou lifted a narrow brow, hand hesitating just a touch in lighting a cigarette. He finished the action and the thready hint of a smile almost touched his lips. "I'd rather you sleep in an alley, quite honestly, than put up with another night of your snoring, Sagara. I leave it up to you to find your own lodging. Just remember that the ship leaves in two days. If you're not on it - - I'll hold no regrets."

Sano bristled, glowering. Kenshin gave him a warning look and said.

"We'll be on it."

Saitou left them without a backwards look, weeding his way into the crowded docks and disappearing like so much smoke in the fog. Sano muttered a few disparaging remarks at his back, but was soon distracted by the clamor of the harbor.

It made sense to find lodging first and foremost, but Sano was not much for sense when there were taverns at hand and the pull of a new city. They had to stop at a loud and blustery bar one street in from the harbor - - Sano having - - just having to wet his thirst with the local brew. Kenshin dragged him away after the mug was drained and Sano's eyes began to drift towards the back where a great many men gathered cheering on some sort of animal fight. Whether it was cocks or dogs, was uncertain through the bulk of the crowd and the loudness of the human onlookers.

"We'll go back.' Sano said, following Kenshin reluctantly.

"You can if you want, once we both know where we're staying."

"You won't?"

Kenshin shrugged. "I don't like betting on blood, be it animal or human. I'd rather not."

"Prude." Sano snorted and Kenshin slanted him a sharp look from under his hair.

"I'm not."

Sano's lips curved up in a grin. "Oh, I imagine you are. In so many things."

Demanding what Sano meant by that, would open up avenues of conversation Kenshin was not comfortable walking down. So he snapped his mouth shut and stared studiously at the street to cover the very slight blush burning his cheeks. Which left Sano very happy with himself, striding down the street with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

They found an inn that seemed suitable. The Philippino desk clerk was more fluent in Spanish than Japanese, which he spoke only a spattering of, and understood even less. They managed to contract a room for two nights. It was an inn apparently that catered a great deal to the island's Spanish populace, more so than the native one. The room was small and stifling, until Sano threw open the slatted shutters and let in some small portion of fresh air and breeze. Patched, faded curtains ruffled slightly, as did the mosquito netting on the European style bed. The room seemed only minimally infested with bugs. It was not so clean as a good old fashioned Japanese inn. Nor so accommodating. There were no baths available, though Kenshin, after a grueling attempt at conversation with the clerk, did learn of a bathhouse a few streets up that might suit his needs. He very much wanted a bath in something other than seawater. He very much wanted to launder his clothes and - - gods, gods, gods, find something lighter and airier to wear than kimono and hakama, in the insufferable humidity and heat. It was never so bad at home, even during the worst stretch of summer months.

"So you're not going with me?" Sano surmised.

"Bath and laundry." Kenshin said. "Perhaps not in that order. I'm not sure. If you loose all your money, that's it, Sano. What I have is to buy lodging and food and I'd prefer not to have to beg coin from Saitou. I'd very much prefer not. So unless you wish to grovel for him, use common sense."

"When do I not?" Sano's brows beetled. Sano's memory very honestly relapsed on very frequent occasions. Kenshin sighed and waved a hand at him to let the issue drop.

"Supper, perhaps? We could meet back here at dusk and go and sample some local cuisine?"

"We could do that." Sano relented, shaking off the offense.

"It wouldn't hurt if you found the baths, smelling of Saitou's smoke and all." Kenshin suggested tentatively. One had to be careful of Sano's sensibilities if one didn't want a brawl.

"Are you saying I stink?"

"I would never say such a thing." Kenshin effected his most innocent expression and Sano's lips twitched, not buying it, but amused by it regardless.

So they went their separate ways. The bathhouse consisted of several private rooms with large wooden tubs, filled with warm water by a gaggle of scrawny native boys. It was not as comfortable, nor as cleanly as a Japanese bathhouse, but it was better than seawater drawn up by a pail. He washed his hair, scrubbed his skin and soaked until the water became tepid. He dressed in the very light trousers and tunic that a man might use to work in the garden or about the house and rolled his travel worn hakama and gi into a bundle to take to the laundry. There was a laundry run by the little Chinese woman and her daughters that sat next to the bathhouse and they took his clothing graciously, promising to have it cleaned and ready for him in a few hours time. Which left nothing for him to do, but go back to the inn and wait, or wonder about the city and absorb what he could of the foreign port in a few hours time.

Restless and agitated by the heat, he chose the later.

Sano had a pocket full of native coins. A few Spanish ones littered the mix. It was in no wise a great haul. The games in which he'd participated had not been for high stakes, but it was enough to encourage him and put him in a good mood. Enough to buy him all the beer and food and imported Spanish wines. Oh, he liked those. They were mellow and sweet and had a kick that took a body all unaware. If he hadn't eaten such a satisfying lunch, he might have found himself passed out on the floor of some bar or another. But he'd always had a head for drink and a zeal for trying new forms of it. He spent a fine day prowling the local haunts, and dusk came about far too quickly for his tastes. He had a list of places to go, given to him by a little Japanese whore who'd come to the islands years ago. He'd talked to her about home and she'd told him about the islands and what elicit pleasures were to be had here. She'd wanted more than talk and he'd persuaded her to be satisfied with drinks, having the suspicion that a man might take more away from an encounter with her than fond memories. She went to the bathhouse with him though, and scrubbed his back and spilled some of her cheap perfume in the water with him, which ended in a splashing match filled with much laughter and almost - - almost more - - but he had other considerations on his mind, despite the longing between his legs - - that made him deny her. He had a focus that was no in wise presently shakable, that had nothing to do with feminine curves and demure facade. In the back of his mind all day was the thought of that broad, mosquito net draped bed and himself alone in it with Kenshin, with no bandits or weather or ghost-riddled monastery or dojo or slant-eyed policeman to intrude upon them. A far-fetched notion at best. A wild fantasy that had crept up on him numerous times during his day, causing a slight stiffness between his legs and a pounding behind his eyes - - but not one he'd dispelled too forcefully. He enjoyed the contemplation, whereas a month ago, he'd have cursed his backwards thoughts and stridently sought to banish them.

He gave the girl some of his not-so-hard won coin and left her to stroll back towards the inn. He was late, dusk having fallen almost an hour past, but Kenshin was ever patient and sat on the covered porch in the company of a pair of little Philippino girls who were babbling incoherently and quite happily at him. It hardly mattered the language, Kenshin attracted children. He smiled when he saw Sano and stood up and Sano had to blink twice at the look of him, as slender as a boy in simple peasant's trousers and tunic that hung loose about his hips. The folds of the hakama and the gi gave him so much more bulk, lent him so much more command in his appearance that a body might not even recognize him at first glance without, save for the shining beacon of his hair. Without the trappings of a samurai, of a man of some status - - he was nothing but a slip of a thing.

"Did the heat make you shrink? "He couldn't think of anything wittier to say.

Kenshin lifted a brow, raised one fine-boned hand and waved absently towards the inn. "My hakama is still damp. It takes longer to dry in this humidity. This is cooler."

"Humm. I'd guess." Sano kept staring. Blatantly, until Kenshin snapped two fingers under his nose and remarked with a hint of annoyance.

"You're late. Its long past dusk."

"Huh? Oh. Yeah, well, I had to take my bath."

Kenshin tilted his head, brows drawn in question. He leaned just a little closer and sniffed. "Sano - - is that - - lavender? - - I smell? And something else - - something fruity? Where did you take your bath? A geisha house?"

"Oh, just shut the fuck up." Sano blushed, silently cursing the little whore for her sport during his bath. "Do you want to go and get something to eat, or what?"

They had fresh seafood for dinner and an abundance of island fruit. Shrimp stewed in coconut milk and steamed lapu-lapu and a sweat dish called ginataang mial which consisted of sweet corn and rice covered in a sweetened coconut milk. They drank sweet basi - - a sugarcane wine that was as smooth as anything Sano had ever consumed and left full and content.

With supper behind them, the night life of Manila beckoned. Sano was eager to answer the call and dragged Kenshin in his wake. There was a festival of some sort on the beach outside the city and past the stench of the harbor. Sano had heard rumor of it during the day and was reminded by a laughing group of native girls who were toting armfuls of flower garlands towards the lantern lit stretch of clean beach.

It was apparently some sort of local celebration, though it was open to one and all for Spanish merchants and their ladies mixed with the natives, as well as lighter skinned foreign traders and seamen who had been lured by the commotion.

Sano was in heaven. The women were friendly, the wine was free and the sounds of local music rhythmic and exotic. He lost track of Kenshin. Lost track of quite a lot, after glass after glass of basi and locally brewed rum and Spanish wine. Found him again, sitting on a little bluff over looking the beach, at the outskirts of the festivities, silent and slim and unobtrusive.

"Why are you sitting here all by yourself? Come and play." Sano grinned lazily, flopping down next to Kenshin, putting the fresh mug of rum he'd acquired into Kenshin's hand. "These women - - oh, they're nothing like quiet, demure little Japanese girls. Look how they dance."

"Not all Japanese girls are quiet and demure." Kenshin offered and Sano's grin widened.

"Well, not the one you married - - but comparatively. Are you sitting here feeling sorry for yourself again?'

"No. Perhaps. It feels - - wrong - - to enjoy myself while they're in peril."

"So you should mope and be miserable, until we find them?"

Kenshin shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. If only there were something to do - - other than wait."

"There is. Drink." Sano put a hand under the mug and urged it up to Kenshin's lips. Kenshin took an obligatory sip and made a face.

"It's strong."

"It burns on the way down." Sano agreed. "But it warms the belly afterwards."

"It's warm enough without." Kenshin complained, but took another tentative sip. And another. And Sano lay there, with his elbows propped in the sand, content enough to keep Kenshin company and watch the happy undulations of the people on the beach. Kenshin finished the rum and Sano dragged him up and down onto the beach thereafter. He had an easier time of it, the rum having made Kenshin considerably less morose and considerably more open to suggestion.

One of the Phillippino girls slipped a garland over his head and a kiss on the side of his lips, which he smiled at, giving Sano a baffled, amused look afterwards. Sano acquired more rum, since Kenshin seemed to have developed a like for it, and made a nuisance of himself at the food laden buffet.

He glanced down at the brush of heavy skirts against his leg. A lovely, dark eyed Spanish lady smiled up at him, red lips curved and moist from the rum spiked fruit drink she was sipping. Sano leered back - - wondering if it were merely all the drink he'd had tonight - - or if she truly did ooze sex. She spoke to him in a lilting indiscernible language. He shrugged and kept staring at the riveting amount of cleavage her gown revealed. One did not ignore such bounty. He discovered, of a sudden, a great like for European style gowns.

She tried again, this time in a poor attempt at the Phillippino tongue, which Sano only vaguely understood himself.

"Sorry. I'm Japanese. Don't speak the language."

She sighed and leaned against his arm as she bent to retrieve a chunk of fruit. She was very drunk, he decided, and very much interested in initiating some sort of dialogue with him, which he didn't so much mind, intrigued by her exotic features and impressive cleavage.

"I think - -" Kenshin said at his shoulder, a somewhat offended, somewhat wary sounding Kenshin. " - - that your hands on this woman are going to cause trouble."

Sano glanced down. The woman, who was pressed against him did, lifting one black brow in question at Kenshin.

"What? Why? She likes me."

"I don't believe her husband does." Kenshin inclined his head towards a Spaniard in military uniform, shouldering his way through the crowd of revelers, his eyes locked upon Sano and the woman.

"Yeah - - Yeah, well just let him start something - - I didn't know. She came on to me."

Sano got his balance, untangling himself from the woman, glaring defiantly at the oncoming officer. The man had one gloved hand on the hilt of what looked to be a rapier, hanging at his hip.

"No. Absolutely not!" Kenshin's fingers dug into his arm, dragging him backwards. He was too inebriated not to stumble in Kenshin's wake. "I will not have a brawl that lands us in jail when that ship leaves. I will thrash you myself, before I let that happen.'

"You wish!" Sano exclaimed, struggling to free himself from Kenshin's death grip. He did and staggered, one knee going to the sand. An angry foreign voice barked at them from behind. Sano managed to flip himself over in time to see the Spanish officer lunging at him with the thin, straight rapier. He blinked, not equating the action with the no doubt mortal effects it would have. Blinked again and the hand was standing there, empty handed, staring upwards along with at least a half dozen sets of other eyes as the rapier sailed skyward. It came back down in a lazy spin and Kenshin caught it by its ridiculously ornate hilt.

"Sano. Please get up and walk away from here." Kenshin said pleasantly. His face was a mask of neutrality.

"Are you serious?"

"You do not want to know how serious I am, Sanosuke. Go." The good nature drained momentarily from his voice. Sano scowled and rose, brushing sand off his trousers.

"I am very sorry." Kenshin said and whether the man understood or not was anyone's guess. "But we wish no trouble." He flipped the rapier and extended it back towards the man, hilt first. The Spaniard hesitated, then took it, undecided whether to pursue the issue. The woman eased herself against the side of her husband, purring something in his ear that made him flush, but took his attention from Sano and Kenshin.

Sano didn't wait to see. He turned his back and stalked up the path from the beach towards the dirt road leading back to the city. Kenshin caught up with him in short order, angry and silent for the duration of the walk up the tree lined road to the outskirts of town. Finally, he could hold his tongue no longer.

"You have no sense! None at all. Though she acted it, she was obviously no whore and these European's are protective to the point of idiocy over their women."

"I knew she wasn't. It was just fun."

"Fun? It was shameful, her with her hands all over you - - perhaps she thought you were the one for hire."

"Fuck you." Sano snarled, lashing out, one hard palm catching Kenshin square in the chest and shoving him backwards.

Kenshin staggered, at a loss for balance, and sprawled against a wall, a testament to just how drunk he was. Just how much grace the liquor had stolen from him. He'd hidden it quite well when adrenaline and need had asserted themselves. Now it crept back up, making him have to try twice to push himself back up. His eyes were narrow and glittering. Angry.

"Don't - -"

"Don't you!" Sano cut him off. "You're not my fucking conscience and you're not my set of morals no matter how hard you try to be. You think you know so much? You think you're so much fucking better than me because you've got all these fucking high standards? Well, fuck you, Kenshin."

Sano lifted his fist, wanting to hit something again. Kenshin just stared at him, eyes gone large and surprised, the anger shaken out of him. Sano snarled and curbed the urge, stalking away instead.

He slowed eventually, himself in a maze of streets that held no familiarity - - wondering where the hell he was going and how he was supposed to get there, in the dark and drunk.

"You're going the wrong way." Kenshin murmured, a quiet presence a dozen strides behind him. Sano glared over his shoulder. Kenshin had stopped at an intersection, hesitating at the right path. "This is the way."

"You think I'm lost"

Kenshin shrugged. "Its been - - known to happen - - on occasion."

Sano's scowl deepened. It took a great deal of will to turn on his heel and march back the way Kenshin indicated.

"You're afraid I'm such an idiot I'll make you miss the damned ship? Then why bring me along at all?" He finally asked, still angry.

A long pause, while Kenshin padded along just in his wake, shorter legs covering less ground. Or perhaps it was the care in which he placed his feet, eyes very carefully on the ground, as if in his vision it swayed unpredictably under him. It might have. Kenshin never had been able to hold his liquor.

"Did I have a choice? Would you have stayed if I'd asked?"

"Fuck no!"

Silence then. And finally. "Yes. I was afraid you'd get us thrown in jail. You're not always - - _reliable_ \- - when it comes to matters of pride."

"You don't trust me?"

"I do." Immediate response to that. Offended one.

"Then act like it!" He was hurt. It was damned - - _painful _\- - to know he was so little appreciated, so little trusted, no matter what words spilled out of Kenshin's mouth. He saw it clearer when his head was buzzing on rum and wine than he did when he was stone sober. He imagined Saitou and Kenshin laughed about him and his incompetence behind his back - - imagined a great many things - - - and those thoughts burned - - irate and blaring and insidious.

"Do you talk about me," he spun, shoving Kenshin again, hard up against the wall of a building. "You and Saitou?"

"Wha - -?" Kenshin blinked owlishly up at him, baffled. Or pretending it. Kenshin could hide so many things behind that innocent look. A body forgot what he was sometimes. A body forgot what he was capable of.

"You heard me. You and that narrow-eyed bastard - - when the two of you would rather sit in the cabin all day, than move about like normal folk."

"Of course we don't talk about you. We hardly talk at all - - you think I enjoy his company?"

"I don't know. How should I know? You always shut up when I come back."

"I don't - - there was never talk to begin with - - nothing to shut up from - - gods, you make my head hurt, Sano." Kenshin pressed his palm against his forehead, digging his fingers into his hair, tugging at it in frustration.

"Good." Sano said, leaning close. Close enough to make threat out of it - - trying to make Kenshin flinch away - - trying to prove something. To himself. To Kenshin. He didn't know. All he knew was that it irked him always playing second best. It irked that Kenshin was sharper and faster and better - - and probably always would be no matter how hard Sano tried.

Close enough that he scented the rum on Kenshin's breath and felt that same warm breath on his face - - shallow, rapid breaths - - but not retreating.

Not doing anything but leaning there, with his fingers pressed against the wall, not quite looking at Sano - - not quite _not_ looking, from behind the half lowered fringe of his lashes.

It crept up on him, the tightening between his legs - - the heat that spread through his lower belly, more potent than rum. He had to physically control the urge to lower a hand to assuage the aching need that grown in his pants. To do so would have drawn attention down and damned if he wanted Kenshin to actually see what the loose material of his trousers no doubt only marginally concealed.

Sano spun of a sudden, thankful of the dark that covered any number of embarrassments. The blush on his face for instance. He started walking, thinking of anything to take his mind away from the need between his legs. But it was damned hard, when all the blood was pooling down there and draining away from his head. Damned hard not to think about how_ bad_ \- - how devastatingly bad - - he'd wanted to slam Kenshin into that wall and - - and - -

\- - oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.

And didn't that just say it eloquently enough.

He needed another drink. Absolutely needed to get more smashed than he already was if he was going to survive what was left of the night - - or the morning - - in that room, in that bed, with Kenshin presence to torment him.

Maybe if he passed out - - -


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Sixteen

Sano veered towards another tavern and Kenshin groaned, reluctantly dogging his heels, afraid that if he lost track of him in this strange, island port - - so late at night and in such a state - - that he might not be able to find him again come morning. He did not trust Sano to find his own way back to the inn, drunk as he was. He honestly doubted he could navigate the city sober without a great deal of luck.

So into the hazy, lantern lit confines of a sleazy little bar filled with seedy looking natives who gave them wary, suspicious looks when they entered. A local bar and not one that turned friendly eyes towards strangers. Sano didn't seem to notice the instant hostility. Sano paid no heed to the obvious weapons concealed under shirts and tucked into belts. Kenshin was certain he missed a great deal of them himself, well aware of how far gone the rum that he had foolishly consumed, had taken him. He was operating on luck alone at the moment, because grace and dexterity and skill were hazy things hiding behind a false veneer of sobriety. Foolish, foolish, foolish to allow himself to reach such a state when he was in a strange place, among strange people with a mission to perform. He hardly let himself drink when he was safe within the familiar domain of home - - but he'd fallen to Sano's whim. And Sano could persuade him into things that no one else could. No one else could make him abandon common sense so thoroughly and enjoy himself while he was about it.

He cast a glare at Sano's back, casting blame where blame rightfully belonged. Sano didn't see it. Sano probably wouldn't have cared if he had. Sano was in a fine mood and not, Kenshin thought, at all concerned about common sense or safety or the general opinion others held of his person.

Sano shouldered his way to the bar, amidst much grumbling and dark looks and slammed a coin down on the warped wood, demanding a drink. Apparently he'd picked up the words to order alcohol, for the bar tender presently presented him with a dirty glass filled to the brim with amber liquid.

"One for my friend." Sano beckoned Kenshin, apparently willing to forget his recent pique.

"No. I've had enough." Kenshin shook his head and stood his ground.

The bar tender said something which Sano might or might not have understood. Kenshin didn't.

"Don't drink, can't stay. Paying customers only." Sano grinned wolfishly and Kenshin scowled, contemplating just walking out and leaving him on his own. But he saw the glint of a curved blade here, the edge of a fisherman's gutting knife there and too many contemplative scowls from the locals to abandon Sano to their good graces. Not a drunken Sano, at any rate. He slipped up to the bar, sliding between Sano and an overweight native that smelled of rotten fish and beer.

"One drink and we go." He said softly.

Sano threw his beer down and signaled for another.

"Sano."

"You drink yours." Sano snapped, scowling a little.

Kenshin scowled back. "What, do you want the both of us so drunk we can't find our way back to the inn?"

"Fair's fair."

Kenshin rolled his eyes. He snatched the mug and gulped a few mouthfuls of the beer. It was mellow enough to flow smoothly. Surprising, considering the state of the bar. He'd expected something akin to watered down urine. He had a second mug before him without even realizing that he'd finished the first. His fingers and toes were beginning to feel numb. His head very disconnected from the rest of his body. He put the second mug down, only half finished and tugged at Sano's arm with some bit of urgency. He needed fresh air badly. Thought he was in danger of spilling up all the varied foods he'd had tonight if he didn't get it.

Sano followed him out, and stood there while Kenshin stood in the street with his hands on his knees, gasping for air not fouled with the stench of beer and sweat.

"You, okay, Kenshin?"

It took him a moment to formulate an answer. "Uhummm - - I think - - maybe - - maybe I'm not gonna throw up - -" He found that beneficial discovery amusing. He laughed and threw back his hair, brushed at it impatiently with one hand when it still insisted on falling into his eyes, and tried to get a fix on which way it was they'd been heading when Sano had decided to slip into the bar.

"Which way - -?"

"That way." Sano pointed and Kenshin squinted his eyes down the darkened street, not quite sure if taking Sano's advice on direction was a good thing - - but having the sinking suspicion that his own was fast dwindling thanks to that one magical drink too many.

It took him a handful of blocks to realize he was lost. Dreadfully, embarassingly lost. Sano laughed over it. Oh, Sano was vastly amused. Sano sat in the street and howled and Kenshin stood spray-legged over him and glared, cursing under his breath, thinking that if the sky weren't spinning so horribly he might get a fix from the stars on at least which direction the harbor was.

"Shut up. Shut up! You do better."

Sano kept laughing. He grabbed hold of Kenshin's arm to haul himself up and almost toppled the both of them in the street.

"There. We'll ask there." Sano pointed at the entrance to a tavern. He had an unerring ability to scout them out.

"Nooo." Kenshin moaned. "We can't even speak the tongue - -"

"Sure we can." Sano sauntered through the door, languid and rolling in his drunken state. Predatory, like a big cat on the prowl. Kenshin had to admit to bafflement that Sano wasn't staggering - - but then, Sano had always had a better head for drink than he had. Sano generally didn't get falling down drunk until he was so far gone that unconsciousness was eminent. He turned and cast a sly, white-toothed grin at Kenshin, asking. "What's the name of the place we're staying?"

Kenshin stared at him, mind completely blank of that all important fact, still focused on the lazy grin and the rolling gait.

"I - - I can't remember. It's - - it's Spanish, I think."

"Oh, big help you are." Sano gave him a heavy-lidded, smug look, then went up to the mostly deserted bar and engaged the native behind it in a conversation based mostly on hand gestures and low spoken, earnest words. Kenshin couldn't hear what he said. Kenshin wasn't getting near the bar, just in case a drink might find its way to his hand.

Sano came back, wiping his mouth of the last dregs of the shot of something he'd had at the bar, smiling.

"Well?"

"Just follow me. I know the way."

"You know the way?"

"Trust me."

"You get lost walking from Tokyo to Urawa - -"

"Just that once, you prick. Either follow me or find your own way." Sano was indignant over that sensitive memory. Kenshin usually had better sense and softer manners than to mention such an embarrassment. A man had to assume that it was the drink talking.

There was little choice, really, but to pad along in Sano's wake, very occasionally putting a hand out to catch at Sano's arm as the street tilted under his sandals. He had to watch the road diligently to make sure that it behaved.

And when next he looked up the familiar porch of the inn was before them. And Sano was beaming over his success. Oh, a very self-satisfied Sano who strode up the steps and into the darkened lobby like he'd just won the biggest pot of his life. The staff was long since in bed and it was up to them to navigate the narrow, dark stairway. In the hallway outside their room Sano turned and cackled.

"Think you can remember which room we're in, or should I point that out as well?"

Kenshin sniffed, deciding to accept the insult graciously, and in the humor that it had been directed. He grinned, leaning in to say. "There's a first time for everything, Sano."

His balance deserted him and he kept falling forward, coming up short with Sano's big hands on his shoulders and Sano's smooth chest against his forehead. His own hands found purchase against Sano's ribs, under the loose lapels of his jacket. Hard, lean muscle twitched under his fingers. He could feel the frantic thud of Sano's heart through the veneer of muscle and bone and flesh. Odd feeling that - - of Sano under his hands - - all caged power and flinching sinew. Soft on the outside, but hard as rock underneath. His skin smelled faintly of sweat and rum and the lingering traces of whatever scent he'd had in his bath - - and underneath that - - something that was simply Sano. Familiar and pleasing and comfortable.

He lifted his head, eyes level with Sano's throat, inhaling the scent that lingered at the hollow between his collar bones. Sano swallowed, convulsively and Kenshin lifted his eyes, feeling hazy and indulgent, pleased for some reason at the wide eyed look of alarm in Sano's eyes. His own lips curved up into a half smile and he slid up Sano's body, raised on his toes, to brush his mouth past Sano's chin - - past his lower lip - - almost touching, but not quite. A grazing passage of breath and flesh that made his body tingle and his groin tighten with lazy heat. Sano's hands moved down his shoulders, palm pressed flat to his back, sliding down to the small of his back - - lower. A hesitant touch that made his skin prickle and his head swim more than it already was.

It was the most surreal thing - - the hands, the skin, the lips - - the intensity of feeling that coiled at the bottom of his gut - - dream-like and intriguing until the hard edge of Sano's arousal jutted against his own, when Sano's hands gripped his buttocks tight and lifted him up, almost off the floor.

_That_ brought a rush of reality tinged vertigo. That brought too much sensation for an alcohol dulled mind to tolerate. He twisted and pushed away and Sano let him, back against the wall, breath rasping harshly through his mouth.

"What was that?" Sano demanded as Kenshin veered for the what he thought was the right door. He pulled at the handle - - flustered by the lack of proper sliding tracks. It didn't open. Wasn't there a key?

A key. He had it in his pocket. He got his fingers about it and fit it shakily into the lock. Got inside with Sano on his heels and the sound of the door closing in Sano's wake - - sealing them in.

"What was that?" Sano was insistent. Kenshin didn't know. Kenshin's thoughts were all awash with incoherency. With sound. With smell. With the electric pulse of touch. He didn't feel so much nauseous, as light headed and sensitized.

Sano caught his arm, swinging him around, fingers clenching so hard it hurt. "What - - the - - fuck - - was - - that, Kenshin?"

There was the faintest threat of violence in Sano's desperate need for answers. The scent of adrenaline mixed with sweat and need. It hit him in the gut, like some stone fist that had come upon him unawares, the violence, the sweat, the want - - the sex.

He caught hold of Sano's jacket, jerking him off his balance, lunging up and pressing his mouth across Sano's lips. There was hardly a beat missed in surprise. Hardly a split second passed before Sano had his hands in Kenshin's hair, fingertips pressed into his skull to tilt his head the way he wanted it. Sano was beer and rum and heat, the moist muscle of his tongue stabbing into Kenshin's mouth, dueling with his own, trying to suck him in and devour him.

There was no control, no nicety, no sweet words, no gentleness - - it was raw and primitive and filled with enough sheer lust to hamper vision. Kenshin's knees hit the bed and he went down, spilling mosquito netting as Sano's weight bore him back. Sano's fingers tore at his clothing, scraping skin in the process. Kenshin ground his hips up, rubbing himself against Sano's groin, against the hard, insistent heat there. Sano groaned into his mouth, disengaging only long enough to push his own jacket off, and fumble with the tie of his pants. Kenshin reared up as he was doing it, planting the heel of a hand against Sano's shoulder, toppling him over with his trousers half down his long thighs, the twitching, rigid length of him exposed and pressed against his lower belly. Kenshin put a hand on it, hot, hot flesh, thumping with the beat of Sano's heart under his fingers. Sano cried out. His name maybe - - or something more guttural. Kenshin leaned in to nip the flesh at the edge of Sano's jaw, grazed flesh with sharp teeth and did it again when Sano arched into his hand, and rolled, trapping one of Kenshin's thighs under his hip, pressing one rough palm atop Kenshin's own erection and rubbing up and down the length of it. Hard.

It was as much powerplay as anything - - Sano trying to roll Kenshin back under his weight, Kenshin trying to if not stay on top - - then at least keep equal footing. But Sano had the weight on him, and the strength and the length of arms and legs - - and it was more the battle than the victory which was important - - more the implied violence of the act and the eventual surrender that made him arch up into Sano when the younger man wormed his way between his legs and hooked an arm under his knee, forcing him into that most vulnerable of positions.

"Wait a minute - - wait a minute - -" Sano gasped, poised there, the seeping, burning tip of himself pressed tight against that place behind Kenshin's scrotum.

Wait. _Wait. _Kenshin couldn't think. He couldn't see. All that was discernible of Sano was an indistinct, shadowy shape looming over him. The room was a swirling miasma of darkness behind him.

"I need - -" Sano shifted and his weight momentarily left Kenshin. There was the sound of shattering glass as Sano swiped the cover from the oil lantern, the clunk of the base turned over, spilling its contents and Sano was back, fingers slick with oil, coating his own length, other greasy hand splayed out across Kenshin's belly - - and then with single minded intensity his fingers found the entrance he wanted and he guided himself in.

Slick with oil, it hardly hurt at first - - but the burning grew. All the mindless lust fled on the wings of sudden pain. Sudden, inevitable invasion. It had felt so good before, so urgent to have Sano's body under his hands and his mouth - - but now, all he wanted was to wriggle away from the hurt - - from the ungainly large thing that wanted to impale him.

_An image flashed through Kenshin's head. Of rain spattered earth and laughing, gruff faces leering over him - - _-

He tried to retreat and Sano leaned down, shoulder forcing Kenshin's knee almost to his chest, hands white knuckled on Kenshin's wrists which he pinned to the bed by his head. Kenshin couldn't see his face. All he could hear was the rasping rhythm of his breath, the small sounds their bodies made as they moved against each other.

_His face slammed into dirt smeared stone, his wrists bound so tight that he could only just feel the fiery pain in his hands - - -_

Sano had forgotten him in his lust. Had forgotten everything but satisfying his own need. Sano's hair brushing his chin as he bent over, grunting with the force of each thrust. Almost - - it began to warm something in him that had started to shrivel - - if Sano would only let go his hands so he could touch himself, he might get it back.

_A foot in his gut when he tried to struggle and an arm under his waist when he'd lost his breath and his ability to fight. An arm that pulled him up against a man's bare groin, bristly hair and thick, prodding phallus - - other men urging him on - - vying for who would be next - -_

He screamed and Sano did and he felt the fiery heat of Sano's release and Sano's hands sliding down his body and finding the softening heat between his legs and urging it back to life. Sano's mouth moving over his own, lazier now, sated and too drunk to realize that Kenshin hadn't been.

_The rain beat down and he was cold - - so cold - - and they were relentless and brutal and the sound of his own hoarse cries echoed over and over in his ears - -_

Sano chased the cold away. Sano curled around him, mouth and tongue and teeth tracing a way down his throat to his chest and lower until the fire came back and his mind blanked again, chasing away the images. But they lingered, at the back of his mind, waiting until sleep came to plague him in real.

Sano felt like he was adrift, lost in an undulating sea that tossed and churned and never let him get his footing on solid ground. It was not an unfamiliar feeling. It was generally accompanied by the impending need to vomit. He rolled, trying to find a position that soothed his rolling equilibrium and came up against warm, smooth skin. He lay there, hand tentatively skimming the curved contour of an arm, thigh brushing the curve of buttocks. The scent in his nostrils was headily familiar.

Kenshin?

What in hell had he done last night? What had they done? He had vague, lurid memories of struggling with clothing and heated mouths and - -and plunging into heat and tightness and rutting like a dog in heat.

Shit. Was that what had happened? With Kenshin? With a Kenshin who'd been as staggering drunk as Sano had ever seen him and who - - Sano's memories were uncertain at best - - had come on to him in the damned hallway. He lay there, trying to pull up more detailed memory, and found his mouth twitching up in the beginnings of a self-satisfied smirk. If it hadn't happened, it had been the mother of all wet dreams.

If he opened his eyes and found it wasn't Kenshin - - oh so familiar scent not withstanding - - he was going to be greatly disappointed.

But, it was, lithe white back curved towards him, tussled, red head burrowed in the crock of one arm, the other hand sprawled off the edge of the bed. Caught perhaps in the clutches of some dream for his fingers tightened spasmodically in his hair and intermittent soft murmurs escaped him.

Sano was at a loss. He had no notion of what a body ought to do upon wakening the morning after having fucked one's best friend. He'd never had it happen before. And despite weeks of longing after just this - - he wished it hadn't happened, because wakening simply hungover with Kenshin in his bed would be far easier than the reality of the alternative.

What did a body say? If it had been a woman he'd picked up for a casual lay he'd have no problem whatsoever. Good morning. How do you feel. Care for some breakfast? Can you pay, I'm a little short on funds.

He chewed on the inside of his lip, wondering if he ought to mention it at all. Maybe not say anything regarding it, unless Kenshin brought it up. Kenshin didn't stumble over his tongue half as much as Sano - - and he had started it - - so maybe just let Kenshin broach the subject. Which meant waking Kenshin up, which Sano was loathe to do, lazy and feeling sick as he was. Maybe sleeping the hangover off would be the best for all concerned. Maybe tackling this sticky situation not hungover would be for the best.

Maybe, if he rolled just a little bit over, he could mold himself up against Kenshin's smooth back, and slip his arm across Kenshin's ribs and curl it against his chest. Oh, that felt nice, what with his morning sensitive cock pressed to the cleft in Kenshin's ass. Nice enough that it twitched and roused and Sano had to forcibly start thinking about unsavory things to keep the half rigid thing from jumping to full life. Sano didn't think that prodding Kenshin awake with _that_ against his rear would be a good way to start an uncomfortable morning.

But maybe Kenshin had felt it regardless, for his murmuring grew louder and his body tensed, the outflung hand curling into a claw. Most definitely in the throes of some nightmare.

"Kenshin?" Sano whispered. "Wake up - -"

And rather abruptly, Kenshin did, with a cry on his lips and a twisting lurch that ended with his elbow in Sano's face and Sano tasting blood from the impact.

"Goddamnit!" Sano howled, hand to his bleeding mouth, scrambling backwards to distance himself from a wild eyed, pale faced Kenshin who sprawled backwards off the edge of the bed, and fell with a thump and the sound of crunching glass.

The globe of the lantern that Sano had knocked over in his desperate efforts for lubrication. Kenshin cried out and lurched to his feet, blood seeping from a cut in the palm of his hand under the edge of the bandages. More from his hip.

"You son of a bitch . . ." he hissed, eyes narrow and deadly, hair in turmoil about his face and his shoulders.

"What?" Sano gawked.

"You bastard!" Kenshin growled. "What did you do?"

"What did I - - ? Wait just a fucking minute - - I didn't do anything that you - -"

"Get out!" Kenshin hissed. "Get out before I _kill _you."

Sano stared, feeling the nausea rise into his throat, seeing nothing but absolute earnestness in Kenshin's eyes. The type of deadly earnestness that the Battousai wore and the sort that a body who had any sense of self-preservation didn't trifle with.

"Fuck." Sano said, angry and wary and goddamned hurt. "Fuck you, Kenshin."

He snatched his trousers, pulling them on in a hurry, as eager to be out of there as Kenshin was to have him gone. He grabbed his jacket and his shoes and stomped for the door, flinging it open with a vengeance and slamming it with equal force behind him.

Damned if he understood what was going on. Damned if Kenshin had ever - - even when they were at odds - - looked at him with murderous intent before.

The wall's rattled with Sano's leaving. Kenshin stood there, braced against the wall, vision tinged with red, red trailing down his fingers and down his leg, warm and wet and sickly. It took him a second to focus on the glass scattered around his feet. A second more to put two and two together and come to the realization that he needed to distance himself from it. Keeping his back to the wall, he moved away, to the corner by the window, where the drapery gently rippled in the warm breeze. His legs gave way and he slid downwards, catching himself with the hand not leaking blood and easing the way to the floor. There was glass embedded in the fleshy part of his palm, and a sliver in his hip. He picked them out dully, shivering.

Flashes of imagery stuck, memory long since buried. His head slammed back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut, hand clutching at the hair around his face. He didn't want to know. Didn't want the reality those nightmarish flashes of memory brought with them. Could not at the moment, sick and precarious with the aftereffects of too much drink - - with the all too recent memory of Sano - - and what Sano had done - - and what he had done - - deal with the conception of his own monumental weakness.

Oh - - how could he have forgotten? How could he have been so blinded as to pretend it hadn't happened? How did a man forget such a thing? He'd let it happen and he'd never in all his life - - not since the moment that he'd escaped the dubious mercy of the bandits who'd butchered the slave train he'd been a part of as a child - - let himself be taken so advantage of. Never let himself be touched when he did not wish it. Never let himself be used - - at least not against his will - - in all that time. He'd made a vow not - - and perhaps he'd chosen to forget because it was easier than admitting that he'd grown sloppy enough and careless enough to let a rangy lot of mountain bandits and a foreigner overcome him and rob him of his dignity.

And Sano had known. Sano had known. All this time and Sano never said a word.

Betrayal. Embarrassment. _Shame._

Sano had known and kept the secret. Sano had pressed him into the very bed he sat within the shadow of, and done the same to him. That's all he could recall of the event. That single moment of clarity when physical act and memory collided and he'd panicked and tried to stop it and been too drunk or Sano too determined for it to work.

Kenshin pressed his forehead against his knees, trembling, trying very hard to separate past from present. There had been more than that. He knew there had been more than that moment of panic. He was reasonable enough, even in his frenzy, to realize that Sano was no rapist. He was reasonable enough to fathom that even drunk, he was no easy target. Which meant - - which meant that he'd had a hand in it. Which meant - - oh, gods - - that he'd betrayed more than one vow and this one willingly.

"Kao - -" His lips froze on her name. He couldn't even utter it, so bitterly had he shamed himself and her. He hadn't meant to. Oh, he truly hadn't meant to. Had no notion of how he'd been drawn so far afield. Other than - - than the fact that it was_ Sano _\- - and Sano had always made him do and think things that ran contrary to what seemed proper. Even before he'd looked on her as anything other than a young woman who needed protection - - Sano had gotten under his skin with his attitude and his humor, his youth and his utter fearlessness and his lack of abashedness of putting hands on a body, or flinging a long arm around shoulders and hauling a man close enough to feel the heat of his body. And when Sano had gone - - he had taken a great chunk of the light with him and great chunk of the joy and the heat and perhaps that had been a good thing, because an honest man raising a family didn't need the distraction or the temptation. In whatever forms they offered themselves.

Oh, what had he done? Nausea rose with alarming suddenness and he lurched to his feet and towards the chamber pot and emptied the contents of his stomach there. Wove his way unsteadily back to the bed after that, miserable and still sick, the room swimming with vicious tenacity. He flopped down and lay there, atop the sheets, the room humid and warm and spinning around him. One of the large, soft, goose feather stuffed pillows offered some comfort, though it smelled faintly of Sano.

What was the worse crime on Sano's part, keeping the fact of what the bandits had done a secret when a man had a right to know such a thing - - or laying him himself when he was so drunk he hadn't the wit to realize the implications. Strangely enough, the act in and of itself bothered him not half so much as the sense of betrayal it brought with it.

Kaoru and Kenji trust in him betrayed without a second thought. Had he thought of them at all? Of her? He was quite certain he hadn't, or he'd not have allowed the situation to progress.

Kenshin phased out soon after and came back to himself, hot and sweaty, the noonday sun slanting in from the window with not a bit of breeze to cool it. He was marginally more clear headed with a few hours hangover induced sleep behind him. Marginally more capable of remembering bits and pieces of what had transpired last night. He blushed pink and sat there, forehead pressed to knees, groaning in acute embarrassment at the singular memory of himself very adamantly trying to rip Sano's clothes from his body.

At the time, it had seemed the thing to do. At the time, getting to Sano's skin - - all of Sano's skin - - had been his adamant, single-minded goal. One had to admit - - reluctantly and through a red haze of embarrassment - - that the memories of it, easing their way back now that his head was not pounding quite so alarmingly, were tinged with a great sense of arousal. Even now and things stirred rebelliously when he recalled the moment when Sano's mouth had drifted down and found his - - no, no, no!

He had to forcefully steer thought away from that avenue. Had to recall discipline and will power and simple common sense. Taking pleasure from the memory was not the way to redemption. He didn't know if there was a method for that. It was done and there was no denying it. He'd been foolish enough and weak enough to let himself slip and now had to deal with it.

It occurred to him that she didn't have to know. It would be so much easier to just forget it and pretend it hadn't happened - - but there was the insurmountable problem of Sano. And Sano couldn't just be forgotten and Kenshin knew, all simple solutions aside, that he was not that good a liar and that the secret would eat him up inside until he was rotten and sick.

So he'd talk to her, when they were back home and rely on her capacity for forgiveness, for assuredly, it was greater than his own.

Sano was a bigger problem and the one presently closest at hand, Sano being Sano and not level headed and not prone to reason and not likely to forget things like sleights and nights of drink induced passion. What had he said to him when he'd first woken, disoriented and filled with the imagery of the nightmare that had driven him from sleep? Most certainly nothing gentle - - if Sano's hasty departure was any indication. Kenshin couldn't recall the exchange. He recalled the pain of glass piercing his flesh and the panic and very little else.

Kenshin sat there, chewing his lip, focusing very hard on remembering what he'd said to chase Sano out that morning - - but all that really came to mind were remembrances of the nightmare that was based very solidly in reality and he shied away from that with a passion, not ready to deal with that particular newly awakened information just yet.

The sun was far past the noonday position, indicating he'd slept the morning away, immersed in the throes of hangover. Present troubles aside, there were other things to be checked on. The ship for one and how far along the repairs were coming. If they were ahead of schedule, he'd hate to be left in the dark and miss the ride and doubted very much Saitou would make much of an effort to track him down to relay the information.

His hakama and gi were cleaned and pressed, but the sweltering humidity made him think twice about donning them. What he'd worn yesterday had been by far cooler and the pieces of it were handily strewn within hands reach on the end of the bed and upon the floor next to it. He blushed and took a moment to compose himself, before scooping up the loose trousers and pulling them on.

He ate a very simple breakfast of ripe fruit bought from a vendor on the way to the docks and found the ship easily from the workmen swarming the deck, fastening the new mast in place. It seemed far along to being finished, from his estimation, but he readily admitted to no expertise in the area and went to seek out one of the mates to discover the new time of departure. He found Saitou instead, lounging on the dock, smoking, conversing with an islander in the uniform of either the local militia or the police. Saitou saw Kenshin and said a low word to his companion and the man nodded, walking off into the lightly populated dockside.

"Making friends already?" Kenshin asked without smiling, not trusting Saitou or Saitou's motives in the least.

Saitou lifted a brow at him, dark eyes sweeping up and down his body.

"You look like a teenaged girl on the way to work the fields, in that."

Kenshin returned the flat stare with an emotionless one of his own. "When is the ship leaving?"

Saitou shrugged. "Tonight. If all goes well."

"Ahead of schedule. Were you planning on telling me?"

Saitou flicked ash between their feet and smiled that humorless smile of his. "I trusted you'd find out. And if you didn't -... " Saitou waved the hand with the cigarette. "-... oh, well."

Kenshin nodded, irritated and trying to keep it off his face. All he needed was Saitou getting the better of him to make this day perfect. "I'll remember that, next time you need something from me."

"And that would be ... when exactly?"

"What time tonight?"

"An hour after dusk, when the tides go out."

"Fine." Kenshin turned to leave, mentally calculating how much time he had until the ship sailed. Saitou's voice stopped him in his tracks.

"So you and Sagara had a little spat." It wasn't a question.

Kenshin blinked, and turned, staring suspiciously at the taller man.

"How do ... why do you say?"

"He was by earlier. Got the remainder of his possessions from the cabin. Said something along the lines of finding other passage ... with better company. I assume the two of you had some sort of disagreement."

"Where ... did he say he was going?" Kenshin ground out, fighting the rising nausea.

"He didn't."

"And you didn't ask?"

Saitou smiled and inclined his head. "When good fortune smiles . . ."

Kenshin swore under his breath, spinning and stalking away. A few hours to find Sano and try to deal with this problem they'd gotten themselves into. Oh, he most sorely did not wish to loose Sano to this. Most certainly did not want to track down and face the Englishman and whatever forces he had at his beck and call with only Saitou to rely on. He needed Sano in this. He needed Sano to protect his back and his interests should something happen to him. He trusted Sano with everything that was precious to him - - with getting Kaoru and Kenji back if he couldn't.

He needed for Sano not to hate him for something he couldn't quite recall saying. He needed a few precious moments to think and he didn't think he would get them.

Chapter Seventeen

Sano was angry. Furious. Indignant. As pissed off as he could easily remember being.

It was easier to bear than being embarrassed. Most anything was easier to swallow than feeling the fool. So he did what he always had done when his dignity was on the line, he worked himself into a lather of rage and went looking for trouble.

And found it. Oh, there was no problem finding a bit of conflict in this volatile port city, what with the natives uptight over the Spanish government and the Spanish worked up over the American's trying to muscle their way into this lucrative Asian port.

Sano found a barfight the first tavern he stopped in. He kicked a fair amount of ass before high tailing it out of there before the authorities got there to break it up. The second tavern proved less violent and all he got was a few decent drinks and a whore in his lap trying to weasel a little coin from him. If he'd have had enough to appease her, he would have gladly taken her upstairs and spent an hour or two proving what a man he was - - with a woman under him instead of a fucking high-strung, temperamental samurai.

Oh, fuck - - but he'd fouled things up good and proper. Should have known better. Should have figured it would backfire. He was a fool - - there, he'd admitted it - - for letting all those weeks of - - what, lust? Longing? Childish infatuation over Kenshin lead him into something so damned stupid. So damned irrevocable. Just because Kenshin had been forced from necessity to rely on him - - to depend on him instead of the other way around - - it didn't mean he was ready to jump into bed with him. It shouldn't have meant anything more than one friend relying on the other and he - - he had managed to twist it somehow.

Of course, Kenshin had been the one to jump him, not the other way around. Sano remembered that with crystal clarity. He might have been thinking about it for weeks on end - - but damned if Kenshin hadn't been the one to initiate it. Damned annoying little tease to draw a man into a compromising situation - - to engage in it wholeheartedly and then cry bloody murder when it was said and done. Like Sano was responsible for what Kenshin decided to do when he was drunk past all hope of coherency.

To hell with him. Forever. And forever was probably how it was going to be, because a man didn't just shrug something like that off. A man just didn't wake up after fucking another man - - a friend - - and pretend it hadn't happened. They'd never forget it, either one of them and Sano lamented that - - amidst the anger that kept him from tears.

He found a game, but his luck had turned and he lost what little coin he'd had left and more and had to fight his way out of that situation, with a half dozen angry natives wanting to take the money out of his hide. He showed them he was no easy pickings and went on his way, penniless now, and desolate. He had one more night paid up at the inn, before he'd be out on the streets, but he wasn't prepared to go back yet, just in case Kenshin went there to get his stuff before the ship sailed. If Sano didn't find work on a ship, he'd be in deep shit, with no one here to weasel a meal out of, or a place to sleep.

A pack of native bully boys tried to rob him, as he was stalking through a questionable section of town. As if he had anything worth stealing. It was the best luck he'd had all day, and the best chance to truly release frustration. He left them moaning in the alley, and after rifling their pockets found himself a few coin richer.

He went straight to a tavern to spend his newfound wealth on booze and food. He was shoveling down rice and steamed vegetables when Kenshin found him. Just came up on him without a sound and stood there uncertainly until Sano happened to look up and notice him.

Sano's gut clenched, his fists did around the chopsticks. One snapped, the ends falling into his bowl. He hadn't expected to see Kenshin. Really, he hadn't. It was like a physical blow.

"What the hell do you want?"

"Sano - - we need to talk."

"Fuck talk. Don't you have a ship to catch?"

"Not yet. Listen, I just want to - -"

"I don't want to hear it! You said everything that needs saying, so why the hell are you here bothering me now? Go the fuck away. Go find your wife! I've got other plans."

"Sano - - I'm sorry."

"For what?" Sano growled. Oh, he wanted to hit him. Wanted to smash his fist straight into Kenshin's regretful, scarred face. "There's nothing to be sorry for. Nothing happened. Understand? _Nothing - - happened."_

If he said it enough, maybe it'd turn out to be true. Kenshin's eyes flickered down the bar, to the other patrons, who were casting them wary looks.

"That's not true." Kenshin said softly.

"No?" Sano sneered. The blood was pounding so hard behind his eyes, it made his vision waver.

"Will you talk with me? Somewhere where we won't draw a crowd."

"I don't want to talk to you. And you don't want anything to do with me, remember?"

"Sano - -" Kenshin's hand hovered over his shoulder. Kenshin thought better of touching him. For a number of reasons, all of them valid. "Please, Sano. I need you to talk with me."

"Why?" Suspiciously.

Kenshin just stared, hair falling into his eyes, mouth set in a worried frown. He took a step away, then another, turning finally and walking out. Sano sat there and swore. He should just let Kenshin wait - - he wouldn't stay for long and endanger his chances of catching that ship. He'd take off and leave Sano in peace and that would be that. But, even when he hated him, Kenshin had a draw on him that was irrefutable.

Sano threw back the last of his drink and rose, scowling at the looks that followed him. Out into the afternoon, looking one way, then the other to catch sight of Kenshin. There he was, standing at the edge of the tavern, at the mouth of the narrow alley between buildings. Sano shoved his hands into his pockets and shuffled over.

"All right. What do you want? I don't have all day to fool around, you know?"

"Saitou said you were going to find passage on another ship?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Because of - - last night - - this morning? Of what I - - said - - did?" A faint blush stained Kenshin's pale cheeks, a line marred the space between his brows.

Sano shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe I'm just tired of this trip."

"I don't remember everything I said, Sano. Obviously, you do. I was upset - - startled. I didn't expect to - -" He couldn't finish it. Just couldn't get the words past the embarrassed lump in his throat.

"You said you were going to kill me if I didn't get out. You acted like it was my fault. Obviously, you don't remember shit."

Kenshin blinked. "I wouldn't! You know I wouldn't. I didn't mean it, Sano."

"You did at the time. If you'd have had a sword, I bet money I wouldn't be standing here talking to you now."

"Then you don't know me at all, if you believe that. I was just - - upset."

"Yeah, from waking up and finding out you'd just fucked me." There, he said it, plain as day and just as bold. Maybe he expected to floor Kenshin with the bald truth. Maybe he was just looking for a little honest emotion to cross Kenshin's face. Something he could latch onto and vindicate his own indignation. He wanted a little disgust. A little hatred of Kenshin's own.

He got anger. He got a finger stabbed in his chest and Kenshin up in his face, pissed off of a sudden.

"No, from waking up and remembering that those bastards up in the mountains had fucked me, you ass!"

Sano stared, off balance. He didn't honestly think he'd ever heard Kenshin use that particular term before. And there is was, even more blatant truth from Kenshin. Blatant and painful and stark and Sano would just as well have erased it from memory. But Kenshin wasn't about to let it go. It was new to him and it was as terrible and bloody a memory, no doubt, as any atrocity he'd witnessed during the revolution.

"And you never told me! You knew - - you had to know and you kept it from me. Why?" Kenshin hissed at him.

It knocked the anger out of him. It made him take a step backwards, trying to gather the wits to answer.

"I took care of them. The one's that did it." He muttered.

Kenshin opened his mouth. Shut it. Turned his head and took several breaths. "That's not what I asked. I asked why you never told me."

"Because - - because you had enough problems - - because I thought maybe if you didn't remember - - that maybe that was for the best."

"And you think you know what's best for me." That came out low and laced with sarcasm.

"Maybe. Maybe at the time - - yeah." Sano had to defend his silence. Had to save face and pride when all he really wanted to do was crawl away from this subject and this confrontation. What a coward he was.

"Well, you don't know as much as you think, Sanosuke."

How the hell had Kenshin managed to turn the tables on him. Managed to suck the righteous anger out of Sano and take it for himself. "Fine." Sano said, done with it. "I don't know shit. Sorry. You don't have to worry about me making assumptions any more."

Sano started walking, shoving his hands in his pockets, staring blindly at the faces he passed. Devoid of destination. He didn't hear Kenshin attempt to follow. All of that said and they hadn't managed to address the real source of embarrassment. Not really. Kenshin had skimmed right over it, going for the old wounds instead of the new. If Kenshin wanted to pretend it hadn't happened - - then fine.

"Sano - -"

Kenshin had slipped up on him, all silent and unobtrusive in his slim black clothing. Sano flinched, swearing under his breath. "Make some goddamned noise when you walk."

"This conversation wasn't supposed to go like this - - it wasn't." Kenshin ignored the complaint. "I'm sorry."

"Fuck you."

"Sano - -"

"Go catch your damned ship."

"I need you."

Oh, that made Sano's heart skip a beat. Made the blood pound a little harder in his head. He managed not to waver in his pace or his foreword glare. "You don't need me."

"I do. I can't do this without you." Kenshin held up a bandaged hand. Not thick bandages anymore, for the wounds were fully scabbed over and the scars beginning to get shiny with new skin, just enough clean cloth to keep dirt and grime from impeding the healing process. But his fingers were still stiff and his grip still weak.

"What, you need somebody to carry your stuff? Get Saitou."

"No. You know - - - no, Sano. I don't trust Saitou. I trust you."

Sano stopped, grinding his teeth. Well and truly fed up with the banter and the evasion. He'd never skirted saying anything that needed saying in the past, why was he keeping it bottled up now?

"Damnit, Kenshin, you want to just pretend it never happened? You want to just go on with things like they were before. There's no getting around what you and I did last night. Its not going to go away. I'm not going to forget it as much as I'd like to and you sure as hell aren't no matter what you pretend."

"Sano - - " oh, he was distraught now, round eyed and pale and wanting - - very badly wanting, Sano thought, Sano to shut his mouth and put on a facade. Sano wasn't going to do it. Sano refused to do it. Absolutely refused to make things neat and clean and pat for him.

"I don't want to hear it, Kenshin. We fucked. You and me. It might have been a mistake, but it happened. Shit, you might have been drunk enough that you actually thought I was Kaoru - - I don't know - - but I imagine you figured it out by the end." He had to add a wicked grin to that last, even though humor was the last emotion he felt.

"I knew." Kenshin said softly, and the eyes flickered down, off to the side - - Kenshin being a coward when he hardly ever backed down from anything - - whether he was afraid of it or not.

It caught Sano off guard, that admission. He hadn't expected it. He'd given Kenshin an out and he hadn't taken it.

"Really?"

"You're taller."

Sano chewed his lip, trying to decide whether that had been said in humor or not. It was hard to tell with Kenshin.

"Yeah, well - - it was a mistake, all the same."

"A terrible mistake." Kenshin agreed.

"Okay. Okay - - then just let me walk away from it."

"I can't. I need you."

"Too fucking bad."

"Sano - - I don't hate you. I don't think less of you - - I don't blame you."

"Look me in the eye and say that."

Kenshin's patience was usually boundless. He hissed in frustration now.

"Yeah, I get it." Sano said and he thought he did finally, and it hurt. "You have a use for me. I serve a purpose, so you'll overlook the - - indiscretion. Hell, maybe you even fucked me because you figured it was a good way to keep me dogging your heels. You didn't really have to."

"No . . ."

"No? No? Then you were so damned drunk that it didn't matter what you got into bed with, is that it? Doesn't matter either way. I'm finished. Give me a little credit for a some pride, if you don't mind."

"Sano - -"

Sano lifted a hand and Kenshin shut up. Just clamped his teeth tight and kept his silence. Sano didn't know if he got satisfaction out of that or not. Didn't know much of anything save that he had to turn his back on Kenshin and walk away other wise he'd do something entirely too embarrassing and at the moment, his bruised and battered ego wasn't up to enduring embarrassment along with all the other pain that made his gut churn and his heart ache.

Better just to walk away.

Yes, Kenshin had been drunk last night. Farther gone that he could recall being in a very, very long time. He'd never had a head for it, so he'd never indulged much, survival being more important for the most part, than the oblivion brought on by sake or wine or beer or whatever spirit his circumstance allowed him to partake of. He had been too drunk last night by far - - but not that drunk. Even at his lowest, Kenshin was never that far gone. He'd known who he was with and what he was about. Oh, surely he'd known that - - he just hadn't cared.

Looking back, with all the other emotional shrapnel out of the way, the drink hadn't fogged his mind as much as made certain things imminently clear. He'd wanted Sano and wanted him badly. And he'd gotten him.

Loyalty and embarrassment and obligation aside, the drink had simply freed up his inhibitions enough to act on an impulse that had been dogging him for - - how long, now? He wasn't quite sure. Dwelling on it now, trying to hash it out and understand it, wasn't going to help him stop Sano from leaving. That would take something else.

Sano's long stride was taking him out of view, swallowed by the crowd and the bend in the avenue. Kenshin hurried to catch up and found himself dogging Sano's trail back towards the hotel. He slowed a bit, gauging that Sano would be more likely retreat into the privacy the room offered if he didn't think Kenshin was on his heels. Sano wouldn't want to be cornered. Sano was skittish enough at the moment to prefer the safety of crowds and strangers to four blind walls. So he let him go in one his own, and gave him enough time to climb the narrow stair and get into that room that smelled of oil and sex and sweat.

Then he followed, silent as a wraith upon the stairs and the creaky hall and tried the door which Sano hadn't bothered to lock.

"God!" Sano swore, exasperated and distraught around the eyes until he got his emotions under control and managed to bring back the anger. "Will you leave me the fuck alone, Kenshin."

"I can't.' Kenshin shut the door and stood with his back against it, hands pressed flat against the wood, fingers stretched out so that taught tendons and muscles sent shivers of pain up his arms. Sometimes a body needed a little pain to clear the head. He took a breath - - another - - and whispered.

"You're my friend - - no matter what - - you're my friend - - my truest friend - - and I don't know what happened between us - - or how - - but I don't regret it - - and I don't hold it against you - - and I won't lose you over it."

"Like you have the only say?" Sano sneered, fists clenched, standing there spay legged in the center of the room defensively, as if he expected attack.

"I love you." There. He'd said it. It was as true a statement as any he'd made. As true as when he said it to Kaoru; as true as any vow he'd ever made to himself.

Sano stood there, wide eyed, flabbergasted - - as if Kenshin had hit him hard enough in the gut to knock the wind from him.

"What?" it was weakly asked, a strangled, shocked question.

Having said it once, Kenshin wasn't sure he could get it out again. "You heard me, Sano," He stared at the floor between his feet and Sano's, at the tiny slivers of broken glass that glinted on the floor. He felt lightheaded of a sudden and lost - - for somewhere along the way he'd come to the conclusion - - maybe between the street and this room, or the doorway and Sano's shocked face - - that there was no price he would be unwilling to pay to keep Sano's company.

"I don't think anybody's ever - - actually said that to me before." Sano said very softly - - Kenshin could hardly hear him. He looked up and Sano's face was drained of blood, as white as Kenshin's own.

"No?" It wasn't hard to believe. It had been a hard world Sano had grown up in. That they both had - - strewn with strife and revolution and violence - - "I'm sorry - -" I've loved you for years. But that didn't sound right, did it? A man just didn't say that to another man. Confusion and desperation were making his heart race and his hands shake. He wanted Sano's face to melt into that lazy, sly expression he wore so often - - He wanted Sano to nod and accept it and to come over and clap him on the shoulder and say that he understood and that things were okay between them - - even if they weren't, really.

He wanted he fantasy, because he'd found, the last few years that living the fantasy was so much more pleasant and so much easier than stark reality. Living the fantasy and ignoring the rest had been what had gotten him into this situation to begin with.

Sano did come over, careful and slow and stood with his toes almost touching Kenshin's, his shadow blocking out the light from the curtained window.

"You mean it?"

Sigh. Oh, he was certain by the roiling nausea in his gut that he did. He couldn't voice it again - - not yet. So he nodded, swallowing back the bile.

"It's fucked up, isn't it?" Sano lifted a hand, callused fingertips tracing the path of the pale scar on Kenshin's cheek.

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"S'not your fault." Sano said, suddenly generous ,and slid closer, until his sandals were touching Kenshin's. He pulled Kenshin against him and rested his chin on the top of Kenshin's head. And there was the sound of his heart again and the smell of his skin and Kenshin squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead against Sano's shoulder to block it out.

If this was what Sano needed to forgive - - to regain his sense of dignity - - to shake off the embarrassment - - then it was a fair price. Tentatively he slid his hands around Sano's waist, up a lean back to rangy, broad shoulders. He pressed his lips to the hollow of Sano's neck.

"You'll come with me?"

Sano nodded, breathless, voiceless, easy to forgive at the right urging - - at least his body at any rate.

"This - - this isn't - - just so I'll help with - - them? Not that I don't want to - - and all - - " he finally found the words - - and he couldn't utter Kaoru's name any easier than Kenshin could.

"No." Kenshin murmured. And it might have been true. Or it might not have. He didn't know. "Sano - - we can't miss the ship."

"Ship? Oh - - right. Ship."

"So, you're coming?" He had to clarify, since Sano was still standing there, warm and solid against him, body quite adamantly decisive and face absolutely devoid of direction. Kenshin backed up the half a step it took to get his back to the door, so he could get a better look at Sano's face - - so he could nudge forward progress, which wasn't going to happen if he didn't get Sano's hands off his body and his own mind off the way Sano smelled.

"Yeah. I'm coming." Sano shook his head, and stepped back of a sudden, one big step that put all the distance in the world between them. He rubbed nervously at the back of his neck, half a tentative grin on his lips.

"Good." Kenshin said, rearranging his thoughts with a little twinge of effort, back into a coherent whole. "I can't wait to tell Saitou the good news. He'll be so pleased."

Sano smirked, back in good humor - - or faking it admirably, and said. "Oh, please let me be the one to tell him. I haven't had a good laugh yet, today."

Chapter Eighteen

They left Manila to sail around the islands that made up the Philippines towards the larger islands that made up the collected territories of the Dutch East Indies. They'd dock briefly at one of the eastern ports of Borneo before sailing around the islands and out into the vastness of the Indian Ocean.

So very far from home. Funny how he didn't miss it. What was there to miss, really? Kaoru and Kenji weren't there. Sano wasn't. All the really important things were either ahead of him - - or here - - on this creaking ship - - so what was there to miss?

Kenshin sat on the quarter-deck, with his back to the neatly coiled rope at the base of one of the masts, absorbing the sun and the mild breeze and the sight and sound a no less than two dozen gulls that flapped noisily about the ship. They'd come from the coast of one of the islands, though land itself was out of visual range. The sailors tossed them chunks of bread now and then, saying they were good luck. As if luck could be gotten from a raucous bird. As if a man didn't have to make his own luck.

Sano had a tremendous amount. But it came in unpredictable spurts. He'd had it last night, when they'd just made it to the ship before the gangplanks pulled up and the anchor raised. Saitou hadn't been pleased to see him. Saitou had actually looked surprised, if such a thing were possible, for those first few seconds after Sano had sauntered up the gangplank after Kenshin - - which in and of itself hadn't been a particular problem, save that Sano was feeling full of himself and Sano had opened his mouth and kept it open when a wise man would have shut it and somehow or another, while Kenshin was checking on the status of his sword and the rest of his few belongings left shipboard, Sano and Saitou had gotten into something more than a verbal argument.

Kenshin had come back up on deck to the crew's yelling and men scampering and crying of 'man overboard', and of ropes attached to life preservers thrown over the side and into the dark ocean below. And there had been Saitou standing by the rail casually sucking on a cigarette, as calm as he might be if say, it had been the shimmer of a fish on the waves below instead of a man.

They'd pulled Sano up, dripping and sputtering and furious and it had taken Kenshin and three of the sailors to wrestle him below deck and away from Saitou. Kenshin got a bloody nose for his efforts, along with a few other choice bruises, but at least Sano didn't go overboard again, which was what probably would have happened if he'd actually gotten close enough to Saitou to try and lay a hand.

So Sano had been grumpy all the rest of the night, choosing silence as a salve for his ego. It hadn't stopped Saitou from coming back to the cabin, as if nothing had happened and settling in his bunk, with his cigarette and a book and a complete disregard for the black looks Sano cast his way. A man could truly despise Saitou at times - - and at others respect the absolute cool he exuded. He never flinched, he never gave way - - his facade - - if it was a facade at all - - had always been faultless.

When Sano had left, not so cool and not so detached, in a fit of anger, Kenshin had sat there, back against the wall of his own bunk and said softly.

"What were you trying to do? Drown him?"

"Sagara's a strong swimmer. He probably would have made it back to shore."

Kenshin narrowed his eyes, quite suddenly afflicted by a surge of hot anger, and anger was no way to deal with Saitou. "You play with his life and I won't have it."

Saitou looked up from his book, one narrow brow arching. "He plays with his life. If he acts like a fool, then sooner or later he'll find the end of one."

"He's not a fool. He's brash - - and young and you know this."

"Perhaps. It doesn't mean I suffer him when he gets in my face."

"Learn." Kenshin said softly.

"Is that - - a threat?" Saitou seemed amused. Perhaps he had a right to be, with Kenshin so miserably out of fighting shape. They both knew that Kenshin would never be the swordsman he had in the revolution and that had little enough to do with the injuries that Winter had caused. But perhaps, after fifteen years, neither was Saitou.

"Take it as you will. But keep in mind, Sano's not incompetent - - he has value, whether you'd admit it or not and we're short on allies in this. Foolish to disregard the ones we have."

"I thought the two of you had parted ways." Saitou said, slowly taking a drag from the dregs of his cigarette. "Sagara seemed adamant of it."

A man had to be grateful for the dim light of the single flickering lantern next to Saitou. A man had to lower his head and let loose hair slid forward to hide the stain on his cheeks from all too sharp eyes.

"As I said - - he's brash. Easy to temper and easy to forgive."

"What exactly, did you do to require forgiveness, Kenshin?"

"There was a misunderstanding." He said softly, for not to have answered would have roused more speculation.

"Hummm," Saitou mused, then turned back to his book.

That had been the first night back on shipboard, but Sano was over his sulk the next day, if not his agitation with Saitou. He came around while Kenshin was watching the gulls and stood at the rail, the tail of his coat flapping, revealing the taut line of his lower back. A man ought not his eyes be drawn to that intriguing line of flesh, even if he'd seen more - - not seemly to be caught staring in the light of day, when he was sober and had control of his wits. No matter what he said to Sano - - or insinuated to salve Sano's wounds - - there were other considerations to weigh. There were the shreds of honor to gather - - and loyalty to a woman. And he was damned old enough not to let the whims of his body dictate the path of his actions, even if he couldn't keep his eyes off of Sano. Wasn't he?

Sano turned about, leaning back against the rail, dark, black rimmed eyes fixed on Kenshin, wide mouth twitching with the hint of a smile, as if he knew of the internal struggle and found it amusing.

"You're in a better mood." Kenshin said, because he had to say something to ease the thickness of the air.

Sano cocked his head and shrugged, muscles playing under smooth flesh, sunlight glinting off the shining disarray of wind tossed hair. Ah, gods, but Kenshin was lost - - surely, surely lost to be so fascinated by small details. He dropped his head onto his knees and thought horrible things about himself and his will power and his common sense. He'd damn well known what to expect of Sano - - on this ship, in the aftermath of what had happened in Manila - - and had had every intention of holding firm control of the situation - - of steering Sano on a path of his choosing. He'd rationalized all of that before they'd even sat foot back on this ship - - come to the stark realization that he might have to give something to get what he needed - - which was Sano's presence and Sano's trust and Sano's loyalty. A cold, deliberate decision to be sure - - and one to feel regret over making - - but it hadn't swayed him in that room - - not with Kaoru's life in the balance. But now - - at this moment - - this painfully casual moment - - he had the frightening premonition that rationalization and reason were flighty things indeed when it came to Sano and that his ability to steer anything would be tenuous at best. Most especially when there was an ache between his legs and a flutter in his belly just sitting there, caught in a silent exchange.

"You okay? You look pale." Sano finally spoke.

"I'm fine. Where did you sleep last night?"

Sano shrugged. "Played dice with the crew and passed out on the floor in crew's quarters. They were okay with it. Better the floor than that narrow-eyed bastard's company."

"Don't fight with him. He doesn't play fair." And he's better than you, but Kenshin would never say that out loud, unless he wanted contention.

"You taking his side?" Sano's eyes flashed.

"No." Kenshin held up a hand. "I'd just rather you stayed out of the water."

Sano's face tensed up, on the verge of anger, very much embarrassed at that painful memory. "Yeah, well - - he tricked me, the dirty bastard."

"You made the first move." Kenshin said flatly.

"Who told you that? Saitou?" Sano curled his fists indignantly.

"The other passenger who saw." The only other Japanese passenger who had timidly approached Kenshin afterwards and asked if 'the young man' was well after his tumble over the railing.

"Oh." Sano deflated, having no argument there. "Well - - he was asking for it."

That said, Sano ambled over and sat down against the coil of rope with Kenshin. "You gonna sit out here all day?"

"It's a nice day. I thought perhaps I might practice a little on deck."

Sano gave him an odd look. A questioning one. "I don't think I've ever seen you practice before, Kenshin."

Kenshin smiled wryly, holding up a hand and flexing the fingers. His hand was stiff, hard to curl into a fist. It twinged trying it, but he did it anyway. His grip would be tenuous on a hilt, but it would never improve unless he forced it. And he hadn't much time.

"These hands need work."

"Okay." Sano said. "A little work out sounds good. I'll help."

Kenshin lifted a brow. "That's a very kind offer, but - -"

"I know, I know." Sano lifted a hand. "Everybody knows the swords not my thing, but we're working on your grip here. _That _I can help with."

Like he'd said to Kenshin, Sano wasn't a swordsman, or anything close to it, but he'd been around enough of them - - the really good ones - - to know when a man's center was off. And Kenshin was off his. It had been hard to tell, back in Sendai when Kenshin had taken down the Yakuza boss's bodyguard, but standing on the deck of the ship, with no distractions save for the swell of waves and the creak of the ship - - it was easier to see just how badly Kenshin was off his game. Whether it was the recent injuries or years of playing house-husband in Tokyo, Sano didn't know. But he wanted to help, so he played whacking board for Kenshin, himself gripping a makeshift sword fashioned out of a thick bit of board. It wasn't a sparring match by any means. It was simply Kenshin seeing how much punishment he could withstand by the constant jarring of bone and muscle and flesh that came with every impact against Sano's wooden weapon. He was sweating after a half hour, and pale as snow, but his eyes were narrowed with determination and Sano's wooden sword dented and chipped along the length from the impact with the dull side of the Sakabatou. After an hour, Sano noticed a stain of blood on the wrappings of his right hand.

Now, Sano was a big believer in the 'no pain, no gain' philosophy, after all, everything of worth he'd ever learned in his life, had come with a great deal of effort and agony - - but this had gone far enough for one day. Megumi had told him, before they'd left, not to let Kenshin overdue it. She'd entrusted him with responsibility to keep Kenshin from harming himself, Megumi knowing Kenshin well enough to guess that he'd push himself past the point of good sense in his endeavor to save Kaoru and Kenji. The fact that she'd had this serious conversation with Sano, on the walk from the dojo to the docks, had been, in and of itself, a flattering thing. Megumi had never made bones over the fact that she thought Sano irresponsible and irascible and Sano had never gone to the trouble to prove her wrong.

Well, it was very likely that he might actually be one of those two things - - but a man never much liked a woman to point it out - - and a man had to admit to trying diligently to live up to her requests when she flew in the face of her convictions and placed responsibility at his feet. Not that he wouldn't have looked after Kenshin on his own - - it was just that she'd given him more specific things to attend to. Things that Kenshin hadn't been in much of a state of mind to stand still and listen to, as aflutter as he'd been over the prospect of boarding that ship and taking sail after wife and child. Things like how to properly clean the wounds and make sure infection didn't start under the scabs and keeping the bandages clean and watching for bleeding and so on. She'd given him a pot of herbal salve and a box of clean bandages and for the most part he'd kept a close enough eye on Kenshin.

"That's enough." Sano said, sitting the end of his stick on the deck.

"No." Kenshin said, with that narrow eyed look on his face that said that his concentration was focused and unwavering.

"Your hand's bleeding." Sano pointed out. "Bet it hurts like hell."

"Go find dinner." Kenshin suggested, a parchment thin attempt to rid himself of Sano's presence.

"Nope." Sano stepped up close. Closer than a man ought to another man with a naked blade in his hand and that look in his eye. He put his hand over Kenshin's wrist and the other over the hilt of the sword between Kenshin's fingers and the guard. Kenshin blinked up at him in surprise, a little shocked at the indignity of Sano daring to touch his sword when he was in the midst of trying to use it.

"You've got blood on the hilt." Sano said, prying Kenshin's fingers off. Kenshin relented, drawing in a soft, little hiss of breath as he tried to straighten his fingers. "Miss Megumi said not to overdue it."

Kenshin opened his mouth - - shut it - - not happy with the blood or the warning.

Sano grinned down at him, sword still in hand. "Hey, I'm not being all girlish about it, or anything - - it's just that hands take a while to heal - - believe me, I know, and if you push it - - you know, mess things up in the process - - it takes twice as long. So use some of that patience you always used to tell me to practice and let it rest for today."

A pause, then a slight inclination of Kenshin's head. He held out his hand for the sword and Sano gave it to him. Kenshin frowned at the blood on the hilt, then slid it home into the scabbard.

"C'mon." Sano tugged at Kenshin's sleeve. "Let's go rebandage that, then we can both get dinner."

The fates were smiling on him. Saitou wasn't in the cabin, nor had been for a while, if the relative freshness of the air were any indication. Oh, the cabin smelled well enough of stale smoke, but no faint cloud of it hung at the ceiling indicating recent exhalation.

Sano knelt on the floor between Kenshin's knees and unwrapped the old bandages. The scab on his palm had cracked and was seeping blood. Little wonder with all the jarring impacts. Sano washed it and dabbed salve on, then rewrapped the hand with clean white bandages. The other hand was coming along better, but then, it was Kenshin's right hand that bore the brunt of the impact in swordplay.

"Here, let me see again." Sano opened up his palm, waiting, and after a beat, Kenshin laid his right hand there. Sano straightened the fingers, bending them back just a little, stretching tendons that had healed too tight. He used his thumb to massage the fleshy part of Kenshin's palm, avoiding the tender center and Kenshin winced and endured it until the stiffness and the pain must have eased and what Sano was about began to relax the cramps in his hand. He dropped his head and the hair not caught up in the tail at his neck slid forward, covering eyes and cheeks, leaving just a sliver of his pale face visible.

Sano retrieved the other hand and repeated the exercise. He should have been doing this for a while, working with Kenshin's hands in a way that Kenshin couldn't, before they healed the wrong way - - but it wasn't the sort of thing a man was comfortable with, taking another man's hands between his, gentle and intimate - - not without feeling awkward. It didn't feel so awkward now - - after he'd been in closer contact than palm against palm, fingertip against fingertip. He liked the feel of Kenshin's fingers, long and slender against his thicker digits. Even wounded, Kenshin's hands were graceful, the motions he made, the economy of movement.

He lifted the hand trapped in his up to his face, brushing the back of Kenshin's fingers along his jaw.

"Are you going to grow a beard?" Kenshin asked softly, head still lowered, eyes shadowed and hard to see from under the hair.

Sano grinned. His ability to grow facial hair was sporadic at best, but was getting better. Damned better than it was when he was 18, at least.

"Haven't shaved in the last few days. Been distracted. You think I'd look good with one?"

"Hnh." Kenshin pulled his hand gently from Sano's loose grasp. "I think - - and please don't take offense - - you'd look like a ruffian."

"I thought I was a ruffian?" Hard to take offense when he was between Kenshin's legs. He put a hand on Kenshin's thigh, between knee and hip and used to lever himself up off his heels and forward onto his knees. It put him at eye level and pressed close enough to Kenshin to feel the heat of his body.

Kenshin looked up, plum colored eyes wary through the concealing veil of bangs. He didn't quite edge away, but his body tensed, just a little. It made Sano wonder if he was having second thoughts. If those conciliatory things he'd spouted in the room back in Manila had been just that - - conciliatory and empty. He hadn't actually said he'd wanted Sano's hands on him again - - just that other - - those bone jarring, heart-wrenching, breath-taking words that Kenshin had refused to utter a second time. The first time had been enough.

"You okay?" Sano hadn't the grace to begin to know how to ask if Kenshin had meant those words. At the time he hadn't doubted. A man didn't utter such things unless he meant them - - did he? Especially an honest man. Kenshin wasn't a liar. He wasn't deceitful.

"I'm okay, Sano." Somberly said.

Sano didn't have much tact in him, or gentle manners when it came to certain things. He snaked a hand out and tangled in the hair caught up at the nape of Kenshin's neck, and swooped in to kiss him. Sober this time and lucid and needing desperately to see if it was the same. Kenshin didn't lift his hands, didn't open his mouth - - just sat there, placidly and let Sano's mouth work at discovering the shape and the texture of his lips - - like it was a chore that needed doing, that he didn't particularly like, but submitted to anyways. Sano would have believed that and taken it to heart like a blade through flesh, if he hadn't felt the growing stiffness between Kenshin's legs, trapped between their bellies, hot and insistent and utterly candid. That inspired him, that encouraged him to wrap an arm around Kenshin's waist and pull him forward to the very edge of the bunk, molding him firmly to Sano's body and Sano's eager erection. Kenshin made a sound then, an involuntary little moan and his lips parted giving Sano a way in, and tongues met and retreated and rushed in again to clash. Warm and moist and sweet. More so when Kenshin wound his arms round Sano's neck, fingers weeding across his shoulders and through his hair.

Oh, and wasn't that the nicest thing, right out in the light of day, and sober enough to appreciate it for what it was. Sano swelled even more with the acceptance, if that were possible. He lost his hold on patience and surged up, toppling the body against his backwards and trapping it between wall and bunk and his own weight. He thrust a hand between them, worming his fingers between the openings of Kenshin's clothing, trying to reach warm flesh. Found the soft, smooth skin of Kenshin's belly and worked his hand lower. Kenshin groaned and arched, wantonly spreading his thighs wider in a reflexive urge to give Sano better access and yet, a moment later, his hands began to push insistently against Sano's shoulders.

"Wait - - Sano - - wait." A breathless gasp, a moan as Sano squeezed him hard.

"For what?" Focus on anything but the body under his did not come easy. He had Kenshin's erection in his hand and that was not a thing that a man undertook with divided attention. He wanted badly to get the clothes off Kenshin or at least the pertinent ones.

"Sano, get off!" Kenshin pushed harder, twisting his hips to shift both their body weights. Sano lost balance and withdrew his hand hastily to try and save himself a fall. He wasn't quite fast enough, tangled as he was with Kenshin legs and Kenshin's clothing. He hit with a thump and sat there, glaring, an embarrassed flush heating his face.

"What the fuck did you do that for? You said it was okay." That was almost an accusation. Kenshin had, hadn't he? Sano knew he hadn't misunderstood that badly.

"Its the middle of the day, Sano," Kenshin said reasonably, a little flushed himself, his eyes more than a little dilated, his lips dark from Sano's kisses.

"So?"

"In a cabin we share with Saitou."

Saitou. That most hated name. Sano scowled, muttering obscenities to himself. Leave it to Kenshin to use common sense when the body dictated otherwise. If that was all it was.

"You sure, that's it?" A man had to ask.

Kenshin took a breath and the smile came back, pleasant and somewhat wry. "I have to admit, Sano, that I almost wish that it wasn't, really I do, but it is and I truly don't wish to have to explain things to Saitou."

As if things could be explained away. As if Sano could survive the utter humiliating indignity of that narrow-eyed bastard's smug look. The stiffness between his legs went abruptly limp at the very notion. Even nailing Kenshin good and proper - - on Saitou's bunk of all places - - wouldn't quite be worth what he'd have to endure if Saitou himself happened to walk in on the process. If only the damned door had a lock. Maybe something could be arranged. A chair against the knob - - trick wires in the hall outside - - perhaps even more accurately, charms against demons.

The days passed in relative boredom. Kenshin worked at the flexibility of his injured hands, sometimes with Sano's help, sometimes not. He disliked, Sano thought, practicing before witnesses. His disliked displays of skill or technique and more often than not, during the following days, went out in the dead of night, under the moon or the stars to practice on deck when there were fewer eyes open and wakeful enough to spy on him. It was one of those things that he wouldn't speak of, he'd just get that look he sometimes did, wry patience mixed with vague nuances of melancholy, and would either let his silence speak for him, or deftly change the subject. And Sano more often than not, was easily distracted. He had no desire, irritating as Kenshin's evasiveness could sometimes be, to pry into the things Kenshin wished to keep close to himself. Well, not all of the things, at any rate.

If Saitou happened by, Kenshin would stop altogether, and Saitou would smile that humorless smile of his and ask if he might lend a hand or two. He'd be happy to offer Kenshin a real workout, as opposed to what little inept assistance Sano could offer.

_No, thank you very much, but I'll do fine on my own._

_Narrow-eyed bastard. Inept, my ass._

_You're weak on the right. Your stance is off. A toddler could get past your guard._ Were Saitou's parting comments.

Kenshin scowled. Sano did, but not, one suspected, for the same reasons.

More days passed. Kenshin's grip grew stronger, though the scabs on his hand bled each night after his prolonged sessions. Though the bleeding grew marginally less.

Sano pursued his own interests in the cabin, directly after Saitou had left to go on deck and take his morning stroll. Amazing how a body had gone years without constantly craving the touch of another - - well, at least not so that it was the foremost focus of one's thoughts - - and now he couldn't get his mind off the idea of finding a bit of privacy with Kenshin so that he could assuage the cravings. Sex had always been fine and good. A need, just like food and warm clothing - - to be taken care of either by himself, which unfortunately was the case more often than not, or by the occasional woman made willing either by coin or charming banter.

He caught Kenshin as he was dressing, pressing him back against the cabin door - - a adequate enough barrier against casual interruption. Mouth over mouth, hands skimming down the lean body he crushed against the wood.

"Sano - - -" Kenshin gasped, when Sano broke from breath. "We've talked about this - - -"

"What? He's gone to do whatever it is he does every morning - - and he won't be back for an hour or so - - so no reason - - not - - to take advantage - -" He worked his way down Kenshin's jaw, to his neck, kissing, biting, licking. God, but he tasted good - - or maybe it was Sano's raging libido that made him seem so sweet.

"That's not the - - point - - I don't think." Kenshin gasped and shuddered when Sano pushed the lapel of his gi off his shoulder and nipped the indention between shoulder and collar bone.

"What is? Do you not want to?" Sano was a quarter focused on the question and three quarters focused on rubbing the growing itch in his pants against Kenshin's hip. Hard.

"Ummmm - - Its not that - - unhh!" Kenshin's forehead dropped to Sano's shoulder with a solid thump as Sano's mouth found and fastened onto one small, taut nipple. His fingers dug at Sano's shoulders.

The noises he made as Sano dropped to his knees, working his way down Kenshin's lean, supple tummy were not quite coherent.

But he regained composure when Sano started fumbling with the cloth at his waist and planted his hands firmly on Sano's shoulders, pushing him back so that there was a space separating their bodies. Sano looked up, hands on the wall on either side of Kenshin's hips. Kenshin's eyes were very serious. Very intent.

"Sano - - this is not the place."

The flesh between Sano's legs twitched in disappointment. He experienced a distinct lurch in his gut. A little anger, a little resentment - - maybe a touch of fear.

"Is there ever going to be a place?"

Kenshin didn't answer. Just gave Sano a placating look, a gentle pat on the shoulder, that mutated into a little more as his fingers lingered on the skin at Sano's neck

"I think I'll go outside and sit in the sun. My hands are stiff from yesterday, so I thought I'd work with the ben wa balls for a while."

"Sure. Whatever." Sano sat back on his heels, giving Kenshin room to maneuver around him. Had he misunderstood? Had he so miserably misinterpreted what Kenshin had been trying to get across in the midst of that apology. Perhaps he had, in the midst of the emotional turbulence. Or maybe he hadn't - - and it was just Kenshin having second thoughts. Kenshin thinking about wives and honor and responsibility - - all those things that Sano snubbed his nose without hesitation when the situation called. Well, at least wives - - he liked to think he had a healthy grasp of honor. Maybe not the same sense of it that Kenshin had, but he practiced his own version, and his wasn't pricked at all by the notion of tumbling a married Kenshin and he didn't particularly care what Kaoru might think of it, if she ever got wind. Impressing Kaoru had never been high on his list of priorities. But a man had to admit that it was high on Kenshin's - - which meant that Sano had to be a little circumspect, even if it went against his nature - - and that Sano had to be patient and wily if he wanted to maneuver Kenshin into the position he wanted before they found wife and child - - because he didn't hold illusions that whatever it was they'd been playing at would last long after that. He honestly didn't think even _his_ conscious would allow it, no matter how much Kaoru annoyed him.

"Sano, are you upset?" Kenshin asked, the little carved wooden box that held the two ben wa balls in his hand.

"No. Are you?" Sano hadn't meant that to sound sullen. It had.

Kenshin cocked his head and smiled. Not his blatantly superficial cheerful one, but the softer, more serious one that Sano thought might just not be fake.

"I'm not upset."

Which was how the subject was left, with Kenshin not upset and Sano disgruntled and disquieted. Days passed, as well as endless ocean. The gulls began appearing again, in ones and twos at first, then in greater numbers as the ship rounded the Dutch East Indies. Sano got a chunk of stale bread and stood at the rail, tossing pieces into the air, watching the gulls swoop down and capture it mid-air amongst the raucous complaints of their fellows. He didn't know where Kenshin was at the moment, maybe back in the cabin by this time, or in a quiet nook somewhere working at the flexibility of his hands. Regardless, Kenshin was wonderfully good at acting like nothing had happened. Ever. He didn't treat Sano any different that he'd ever treated him. Sano couldn't decide if that were a good thing or not.

The taint of smoke in the air eventually alerted him that he wasn't alone at the rail. He glanced to the side and started just a little at the appearance of Saitou, a dozen feet down the rail, when Saitou hadn't been there before. The man was quieter than Kenshin and by far more venomous. Not the sort of man a body liked sneaking up on him. Saitou was casually staring in Sano's direction, elbows on the rail, cigarette between two long fingers.

"What are you looking at?" Sano flung another piece of bread into the air. It gained quite a height before a bird snatched it up.

Saitou took a long drag before answering. "You. Sulking. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was over Himura."

Sano blinked, shocked over that blatantly rude - - but one had to admit correct - - assumption. "Who the fuck asked - - You have no idea what you're talking about."

A man had to deny it. A man had to swell up a little in indignation and defend his - - well, his manliness. The remainder of the bread crumbled in his fist and he shook it out over the water, turning to face Saitou head on.

"You're so transparent, Sagara." Saitou didn't bother to shift. "You followed him around like a dog at its master's heels then, and you're doing the same now. Always trying to impress him, to prove something."

"Are you looking for a fight?"

"What? Need to prove something to me, as well, boy?"

"Don't call me 'boy', you bastard. And you can goddamned well keep your opinions to yourself."

Saitou shrugged and said something in a language that Sano didn't comprehend.

"Was that an insult?" Sano demanded, taking an angry step towards Saitou.

"No."

"Well - - well what was it? What did you call me?"

"I didn't call you anything. Just practicing my English. I said,_ as you wish._"

"Oh. Well, okay."

Saitou shook his head, something akin to amusement twitching on his lips. It made Sano nervous when Saitou smiled.

"It wouldn't hurt you and Himura to learn a few simple phrases in the language, since we'll be dealing with the British when we reach Ceylon."

"Maybe. Ask Kenshin." Sano watched the gulls hitting the water, cleaning up the last of the crumbs.

"I'd think you'd be proficient at picking up languages - - being the world traveler that you are."

Sano narrowed his eyes. "Where'd you hear that? Kenshin tell you?"

Saitou took a drag and refrained from answering. Bastard.

"All right." He said belligerently, because to back down from that challenge would prove his ignorance, or worse still, his cowardice, and he wasn't willing to succumb to either in front of Saitou.

Chapter Nineteen

Twelve hours in Borneo. Just enough time to off load goods purchased in previous ports and trade them for new cargo here. It was a busy port. A Dutch port with a great spattering of blonde heads and pale skin mixed in with the darker skinned natives. But even the natives seemed foreign, this far away from home, the tilt of the eyes and the structure of the faces Indian in descent.

In a show of generosity, Saitou bought lunch at a dockside tavern and Sano was cheerful enough about the free food to forget his grudge. They had beer and spicy native fare that Kenshin couldn't quite develop a taste for. Sano had no problems with it and finished his portion and hinted around for seconds. Saitou ignored him. Saitou told them of his contact on the English held island of their destination and what to expect once they got there, from the English authority. Which would more than likely be a great deal of scorn for the charges against one of their own and an unwillingness to allow them the freedom to hunt Winter down on their own.

"I thought," Kenshin said carefully. "That your contacts were aware of this man's activities and were in favor of stopping them."

"To a degree, yes." Saitou had an unlit cigarette between his fingers. "But it is no more simple to arrest an English nobleman without proper proof, than it would be to arrest a Japanese one. More difficult, in fact, since the crimes in question were committed for the most part in Japan and the English have a swollen sense of superiority."

"You should get along just fine with them, then." Sano said, not able to help himself.

Saitou lifted a brow at him, but did not lower himself to retort.

"So what are you saying?" Kenshin asked.

A faint, humorless smile tugged at the edges of Saitou's thin lips. "Subtlety is in order. And perhaps a bit of subterfuge - - which means Sanosuke ought to stay ship bound - -"

"Fuck you, asshole."

"- - and you and I ought to be very polite to the English authority on the one hand and go about our own affairs on the other."

Kenshin was silent a moment, chin propped on his palm. Saitou was no ordinary policeman. Saitou carried the badge of law, but Kenshin knew very well that a great deal of his work went on within the shadows and was bloody and permanent in nature.

"So you will hunt him down if they will not and take care of the problem yourself?"

Saitou shrugged, expressionless "Would it offend your sense of morals, Himura?"

Kenshin frowned, uneasy and knowing very well that it showed. But it was not so simple a question and one he'd lain awake in turmoil over for many a night. He'd been willing to take Winter's life in the throes of panic and desperation, but could he do so in the calm light of reason? Could he break his vow after so long of keeping it intact? He supposed it would come down to the moment. He supposed it would depend on Kaoru and Kenji and the state of their well-being. If they were - - dead - - he supposed there was very little he wouldn't do to see Winter join them. And anyone else that had had a hand in it.

"Kenshin." Sano had his fingers around Kenshin's arm, just above his wrist, asserting enough pressure to get his attention. Kenshin blinked and stared at him.

"You okay?" Sano asked, concerned.

"What?"

"You sort of went away there for a moment."

Had he? Saitou was still staring, waiting for an answer. "No. As long as he leads me to Kaoru and Kenji first, there would be no offense taken."

Saitou smiled, but of course it didn't reach his eyes. The smile of a man who killed for justice and felt no remorse for it. But then, Saitou never had. Saitou's purpose had ever been clearer than Kenshin's own.

"C'mon." Sano pulled him up by the same hold on his arm, whether he wanted up or not. "We've got about ten hours to waste. Let's see what Borneo has to offer."

Kenshin followed Sano about yet another port town, and found the smells and the sounds much the same. It all blended together into one colorful conglomeration when the mind drifted elsewhere. Sano was hot to play a few of the local games of chance and Kenshin hadn't the focus to argue with him, more interested in estimating the value of his convictions when placed against the welfare of that which he loved. If they were dead - - and a reasonable man, in the reasonable light of day had to admit that possibility - - then it wouldn't matter anyway. What would life be worth with that integral part of his heart torn away? He might as well wreck vengeance in the most fatal way possible. Would Kaoru frown in disapproval over that morbid thought? Maybe not, if Kenji had been harmed. He thought she would take a life without hesitation if it was in protection of her son.

His introspection lasted the afternoon, until finally he came back to the happenings around him sitting out on the edge of a empty dock, away from the noise of the crowded port with the empty seaweed wrappings of some rice and beef concoction that Sano had bought from a vendor and come here to consume.

Sano was musing about the allure of the Indian mainland and how much he liked the look of Indian women and how the food wasn't so bad that he couldn't get used to it.

"Why?" Kenshin asked, feeling rather like he'd missed a great deal of Sano's conversation - - which he had in all truth, for most of the morning.

Sano shrugged. "Wouldn't be a bad trip, you know. Ceylon, where we're headed, is right there. Wouldn't be much to get a boat ride to the tip of India and from there I could bum around - - whatever - - and eventually work my way back east. I've heard Calcutta is the place if you like a town with a little punch to her."

"You're thinking about traveling through India?" The concept was starting to sink in and with it a growing sense of hollowness in the pit of his stomach. It was hard, thinking about losing Sano on the heels of thoughts of losing Kaoru and Kenji.

"Well - - yeah. I don't think going back to Tokyo with you and the family anytime soon is really the best thing to do - - unless you wanted to rent me Yahiko's old room and we shacked up together. You think Kaoru would mind much if we screwed around once in a while or would she - -"

"Sano! That's not funny." Kenshin frowned at him and Sano smiled and shrugged.

"Yeah, I thought as much. So I was thinking about other alternatives." The smile didn't really reach Sano's eyes. It was a little sad, a little wistful. Sano hadn't looked so regretful the last time he'd left Japan's shores for wider horizons.

"Sano?"

"Humm?"

"I was - - distraught - - for a very long time, when you left the first time. I knew why you thought you had to - - but I still grieved. The worst part, I think, was not knowing whether you would ever come back - - if you were dead on some other shore and I'd never know. I don't like that sort of ignorance."

"So what do you want, Kenshin? What solution do you have to this problem? IS there one? I've been thinking and thinking and I can't come up with shit. I know what you want. You want all of us in one place where you can keep an eye on us - - just like things used to be."

"That wouldn't be that bad." Kenshin said softly.

Sano leaned over, face very close to his, breath tickling his skin. "You think? You think she wouldn't figure it out eventually? She's not the brightest rock in the pile when it comes to certain things, but she's not stupid and we're not saints, neither one of us - - despite how hard you try - - she'd _figure_ it out. Or at least enough of it to make your life miserable."

Kenshin sat there, arm curled around one updrawn knee, thinking that Sano had a point there. Thinking that no matter how hard he tried he caught himself looking at Sano sometimes in a way that a man ought not be looking at another man, with thoughts running through his head that most definitely ought not be there - - but he'd crossed that bridge already and no use wishing it hadn't happened because wishes were useless things that only muddied the waters instead of helping them run clear and honestly - - _honestly_ he didn't regret Sano. He couldn't regret Sano, because his heart lay as firmly in that direction as it did with Kaoru and Kenji. If he could keep Sano with him - - with them - - he would - - a man could have urges, after all and not act on them. A man could school his face not to betray licentious thoughts lurking behind his eyes. Whether Sano could was another matter, Sano at the heart of things being more honest than Kenshin and by far more direct in what he wanted and what he didn't. And more than likely not apt to hide certain jealousies. When Kenshin gave it some thought, it seemed that even years ago, when they all had been together under less complicated circumstances Sano and Kaoru had been at odds and well - - it just hadn't occurred to him that it might have been over him.

"Sano, will you not make that decision just yet?"

Sano shrugged, gazing out over the water as if he already imagined himself on distant shores. He didn't look particularly happy over it. He looked lonely already. But he'd deny that, of course, if one pointed it out.

Kenshin slid his fingers around the back of Sano's neck, pulling him close enough to touch foreheads. "Just think on it."

"I _am_ thinking on it."

Kenshin kissed him. Lightly on the side of the mouth and again, grazing Sano's closed lips.

"Bribery?" Sano asked and a man could have taken offense, if a man didn't know how confused and hurt Sano probably was. A man had to, feeling much the same himself.

"No." It was likely the last chance before Ceylon when there would be no time for anything but outmaneuvering the British and racing to find Kaoru and Kenji.

Sano's arm snaked around his back, fingers twining in his hair and pulling his head back. Sano peered down at him warily. "You sure?"

Kenshin blinked, not certain if he meant the accusation of bribery or the attempted kiss. A hint of a smile touched his lips.

"I said so, didn't I?" it was the answer Sano would have given.

Sano nodded of a sudden and released him, climbing to his feet and offering his hand to Kenshin, who stared up at him uncertainly.

"Well, c'mon then. We've only got a few hours till the boat sails."

Kenshin was willing and the willingness didn't seem forced or calculated, so Sano damned sure intended to take advantage while the mood lingered. He had a handful of coins and a few pieces of local paper that he'd won in the games of chance he'd drifted through this morning. He let the inn keep of the first cheap lodging he passed name his price for a room for the afternoon. He didn't frankly give a shit what the man must have thought he needed the room for, what with Kenshin in tow and no baggage between them.

Sano was better prepared this time. He wasn't drunk and Kenshin wasn't, and being coherent he had every intention of doing this right and proper, instead of rutting like animals in heat. Of course, good intentions went awry when he got his hands on Kenshin's skin and Kenshin's hands found him and circled him, tentatively almost and curiously, as if he didn't quite recall the first time they'd done this. He probably didn't. Sano didn't remember much of it, save the recollection of sensation and satisfaction.

He sprang to life, hot and hard and desperate under Kenshin's fingers and his body demanded closer contact, overriding all the plans of his head. He lunged forward, grasping the back of Kenshin's neck and kissing him open mouthed, bearing him backwards onto the lumpy, prickly feather stuffed mattress.

"Sano - - Sano - - calm." Kenshin breathed against his ear, stroking his back and his sides, trying to shift so that Sano's weight didn't press down uncomfortably.

Sano couldn't comprehend calm at the moment, too overcome by his body's need and honestly not so old a hand at the game as some of his bragging suggested, to control the urges. Whores for the most part, didn't care how talented a man was or how long he lasted, as long as they had coin in their pockets.

Kenshin was better at it. Kenshin's fingers wound through his hair and Kenshin's lips and tongue traveled over the skin he could reach. Kenshin urged him to roll off and he did, reluctantly, then shivered when Kenshin slid close to his body and pressed his lips to the hollow of Sano's throat.

Okay. That was nice. Kenshin moved down his chest and Sano bit his lips, ashamed that all he'd wanted to do was rut without finesse, his sex so hard between his legs that it hurt - - it damned well ached with need - - while Kenshin had the presence of mind to do what Sano had intended all along, which was to make it something more than simple fucking.

"Sorry - - sorry - - " he gasped out an apology, to which Kenshin didn't respond, Kenshin's hands running down his ribs and the muscles of his stomach and lower - - god lower - - then back up again, as if Kenshin were working out the terrain of his body by feel alone.

God knew, he knew the feel of Kenshin's, as much from imagination as from those few precious gropes he'd been able to steal. Small boned and lithe, tight, hard muscle, soft skin, soft hair, soft lips, hard length of flesh between his legs. Sano caught that between the fingers of one hand and heard a satisfying gasp. A little foreplay was fine - - yes, fine indeed, but if Kenshin tried to draw it out too long, Sano just might die from the stress.

He grasped Kenshin's rear with his free hand and pulled him back up where he could get to his mouth and murmured his concern. "Are you trying to kill me, Kenshin . . .?"

"Are you that delicate?" Kenshin smiled at him, but his eyes were a little dilated and his skin had a fine sheen of sweat and his lashes fluttered a little at what Sano was doing with his hands, his own hands going a little lax when Sano pulled him close, groin to groin, and lifted his leg up over Sano's hip. His nails bit into Sano's flesh when Sano let his fingers drift behind Kenshin's sex.

"Okay." Kenshin gasped, after the tremor had passed. "Okay . . ."

Sano, being at heart, an optimist, had acquired from a dockside shop in the last port they'd visited, an ointment for just such occasions. He'd almost forgotten it, but Kenshin's attempt at prolonging the moment had helped Sano reassert a little coherency back into his thoughts. He groped after his jacket and the fumbled in the pocket, tossing out various collected junk until he found the small, ceramic jar.

"Better than lamp oil." Sano made an attempt at a grin, but couldn't quite manage it, the situation by far to serious for levity.

Kenshin blinked at him, having had a moment to catch his breath and his wits while Sano searched his pockets. "Less glass on the floor, as well."

Sano gave him a look, wondering if he were being chided for that clumsiness. He only vaguely recalled knocking the damn lamp over in his efforts that night.

"I was drunk." He defended himself.

Kenshin lifted a brow and urged him back down. It was a matter then of finding the best way about it when one wasn't driven by blind, desperate instinct or drunken haphazardness. Not so easy as with a woman. Not so comfortable or naturally welcoming, but Sano had never in his life balked at challenge and he doubted Kenshin ever had. So they managed, and more than managed, with Kenshin's rear pressed up tight against Sano's loins and Kenshin's pale back slanting down towards the mattress, forehead pressed into the cloth, fingers clutching at the sheets. There was the new scar from the bullet wound on his shoulder, crisscrossed by strands of hair, and fainter, much older scars here and there along his back. Sano bent over, pulling Kenshin closer, hands encasing Kenshin's sex, while he pressed his face into the loose hair at Kenshin's neck and listened to the sound of Kenshin's labored breath mingling with the sounds issuing from his own throat.

And afterwards lay recovering both their breaths on sweat dampened sheets, staring at a ceiling rife with cobwebs and warped timbers. Sano was at a loss for words. He never had been much for talk after his bouts of sex in the past. Hard to know what to say to a woman after the fact. He usually ended up making a fool of himself - - though not - - adamantly not, he assured himself - - during the act itself.

"Sooooo - - how long between here and Ceylon?" One had to make an effort at nonchalance. It was imperative to pretend the world had not just shaken on its axis under him. There was silence for an answer and Sano grimaced and thought himself an idiot and chanced a glance out of the corner of his eye in Kenshin's direction.

Kenshin was thinking, Sano could see that clearly enough. Kenshin had his eyes mostly shut, staring up at the same ceiling that Sano had, but more than likely not seeing it. A body cringed to imagine what thoughts were running through his head. A body began to feel a little self-conscious and question the quality of its performance.

"C'mon, it wasn't that bad." He tried to get the sound of humor into it, but it came out sounding whiny. _Foolfoolfool!_

"What?" Kenshin looked his way, a little cognizance seeping into his eyes, a little attention spared for Sano from whatever musings had him in their grip.

"Nothing." Sano grumbled. It wasn't as if he'd expected to be gushed over afterwards for his prowess. It wasn't as if he'd wanted Kenshin all close and cuddly like a woman, for god's sake.

"Ummm." And Kenshin did roll closer and rest his cheek against Sano's shoulder. Some consolation there, but he didn't speak and he didn't let any clues slip as to what he was thinking, which irked Sano to no ends, when he needed just a little bit - - a tiny little scrap of confirmation. Instead he got silence and a comfortable presence at his side and himself starting to make wild guesses at what was going on inside Kenshin's head. He was probably thinking about Kaoru and badly stretched loyalties and promises and bemoaning his own lack of conviction. That was Kenshin all over. Never good enough for his own sense of righteousness. Always shouldering the blame and taking the bulk of the punishment. It pissed Sano off. It had always pissed Sano off.

"What?" he finally snapped, loud enough and irritated enough that it broke through Kenshin's musing.

Kenshin tilted his head and blinked up at him questioningly. "What, what?"

"What the hell are you thinking about?"

"I don't think." Kenshin said slowly, in all seriousness. "That India is a good idea right this moment. There's a great deal of unrest with the English and all. It's not a safe time to tour, I really don't think it is."

Sano blinked back, irritation knocked out of him. Kenshin hadn't been worrying about Kaoru at all, but about _him_. He didn't know whether to be gratified or offended that Kenshin didn't think he was capable of taking care for himself.

He rolled over of a sudden, looming over Kenshin with his elbows planted in the mattress to either side of Kenshin's head. "So you're saying, you don't think I can handle a little violence between the clumsy English and the Indians?"

"The English have guns. A great many guns." Kenshin countered, "And you're not always very wise about who you anger and who - - -" Kenshin paused, drawing breath, pulling a corner of his bottom lip between his teeth when Sano pressed down with his lower body. " - - and who you don't."

"Sooooo, I'm not wise?"

"Of course you are. Occasionally. Once in a while. You have rare moments of brilliance."

"Asshole." Sano felt better. "How long before the ship sails?"

Kenshin settled a little more comfortably beneath him, opening his legs so that Sano lay between his thighs, snaking his hands up along Sano's ribs to his shoulders. "A little. No reason to leave just yet . . ."

Sano was smug and not so subtly satisfied with the afternoon's endeavors. He was most thoroughly satisfied with himself, despite a few moments uncertainty, quickly quashed under the ego of a young man who had always been painfully confident of his own abilities. That was okay. It made Sano happy and Sano being happy, made Kenshin happy - - and Sano was not so near-sighted in his exuberance that he let slip the reasons once they were back amongst the familiar faces of the sailors they'd spent a good deal of the last month in the company of. Though one doubted that the mood would escape Saitou, who had a preternatural perception when it came to reading people. One could only wait and see how much heed he paid Sano and hope - - very dearly hope - - that as usual Saitou found better things to occupy his attention.

One might also have hoped, not more than a few days past that such a coupling as he and Sano had had, might have cured the both of them - - of similar notions on board the ship where discovery was not only likely, but inevitable in such closed quarters. Kenshin's intentions were so very good. So very reasonable when he'd walked back onto this ship, but a day out, when Sano sidled up to him in a narrow deserted passage, caution died on his breath, sucked out by Sano's closeness and Sano's scent and Sano's body under his hands. They broke apart, gasping a little as a door opened down the way and one of the foreign passengers walked out, heading for the deck, never bothering to cast a look towards the darkened end of the passage. It made Kenshin's heart thump a little faster though, the near call, and he gave Sano a stern look and straightened his gi, before padding down the hall towards the deck himself.

Sano trailed him, grinning lazily, hands in his pockets, hair a little more disheveled than usual from Kenshin's fingers in it.

"You know," he said, leaning on the rail next to Kenshin and staring out over the relatively calm waters. "They picked up a load of cotton from Borneo. It's down in the back of the hold. Nobody likely to walk up on a body down there. Nice and quiet and softer than all the barrels of rice wine that was there before."

"How do you know that?" Kenshin pulled a strand of hair pulled loose from the tail at his neck, from his mouth.

"I get around. Saitou's not the only one with contacts, you know."

"Unh." Kenshin lifted a brow and leaned down on his elbows, watching the sliver of silver fish that raced alongside the boat. "So - - do you speak any English?"

"Any English?" Kenshin canted a sideways look up at Sano's sun-backed silhouette.

"Yeah. Like, are you gonna be able to understand anything when we get to Ceylon? Most of them know English - - at least where we're going."

"Who told you that?"

Sano shrugged, looking disgruntled. "Saitou."

"You had a civil conversation with Saitou?"

"I am capable, you know. Of dealing with assholes and not going off."

Kenshin looked back down at the fish to hide a smile. "You've depths and depths, Sano. You hardly ever surprise me anymore."

"Humph." Sano frowned, not sure how to take that. "I've picked up a few words from him. He offer to teach you any?"

Kenshin frowned himself, thoughtfully. Saitou hadn't. Strange that he'd offered Sano. Perhaps he thought Kenshin might have turned him down - - or perhaps he'd just as well Kenshin not speak the language. It would make him dependent upon Saitou to a certain degree and give Saitou that much more control of the situation and of him. He vaguely recalled some of the lessons that Winter had held with Kaoru and Kenji - - but only the few words that Kenji had proudly repeated to him stuck in his memory.

"C'mon." Sano broke Kenshin's brooding silence. "Let's go out in the sun and work on your grip."

The weather was good. The wind was on their side the whole way from Borneo. The captain proclaimed that they would make port at Ceylon ahead of schedule. Sano's nerves began to string tight. Kenshin's began to settle, that dread calm seeping into his expression that foretold that there would be very little in the way of levity or relief the last day at sea. Not that Sano expected it - - though he would not be adverse to the latter if Kenshin chose to grant it. The bales of cotton in the hold had proved a private enough retreat.

When the shoreline of Ceylon came into view on the gray horizon of the ocean, he and Kenshin and Saitou, along with a few other passengers stood at the rail along the prow and watched its advance. Soon enough they'd be on its shores and the hunt for Kenshin's lost family and the scoundrel that had taken them could begin in real.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Twenty

Ceylon sat at the Western entrance to the Bay of Bengal, separated only by a narrow strait from the mainland of Hindostan. India. It was a large island, as large as Hokkaido, the northernmost island of the four major islands that made up Japan, and according to Saitou, nearly a million and a half souls inhabited it, made up of various tribes of native Cingalese, Malabars, Mahomentans, Coolies and Dutch and English settlers. It had once been a great center of civilization, Saitou said, having done his research quite thoroughly, possessing a great many ruins of ancient cities, canal, bridges and aqueducts within the interior of the island, but those ancient empires had faded and what was left was a subjugated population, passed from the Dutch to the English.

But the port they sailed into held no hint of ancient wonders. It was crowded with boats and ships, small vessels and junks that hardly looked fit to ride the waters of the ocean. Jetsam floated atop the gentle waves of the harbor, probably a combination of bilge from incoming ships and trash from a harbor overflowing with human life. The British flag flew from the highest building and no small number of British ships, both commercial and military sat at anchor. It was clear where the balance of power lay in this port, if not all of Ceylon. The British were not shy about flaunting it. British customs agents boarded their ship upon docking and British soldiers in their crisp uniforms with their ever-present rifles patrolled the dockside.

"The Indian problem," Saitou said, when Kenshin eyed the passage of a troop of armed soldiers warily. "They're having a hard time of it on the mainland. A great deal of disillusionment with their methods of government. I would imagine they don't want the same sentiment to get out of hand here."

"I hate guns," Sano said, watching the same group of Brits with their practiced step and their air of superiority, make their way through the crowd of darker skinned natives crowding the dockside. "It doesn't take much skill to kill a man with a gun."

"The skill is in avoiding it," Saitou said. "The greater part of that, being knowing when to keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Can you do either of those things, Sagara?"

"I can, asshole."

Sano glared. Saitou just had to get in as many nasty shots as he could. It was like the man thrived on pissing Sano off. Maybe Saitou wasn't happy unless he was aggravating somebody and he sure hadn't been concentrating on Kenshin. Of course, Kenshin was preoccupied. Between worrying over his family and worrying over Sano, Kenshin's attention tended to drift. Sano thought it was a much appreciated favor he was doing him, every time he managed to draw him into more physical pursuits, because that was about the only time that Kenshin _wasn't_ worrying.

They had no choice but to follow Saitou's lead. So they gathered all their belongings and marched after his tall, lean figure through docks crowded with cargo coming and going, fishermen bringing in hauls of seafood, and British customs agents running to and fro, damned and determined that no tariff went unpaid. Once off the main portside avenue the traffic became more pedestrian, more shops, more booths selling wares, more smells of cooked food, instead of the briny odors of fresh fish. There were carts and carriages and open top calash's pulled by native bearers. Saitou waved down one of those and the three of them crammed into the narrow seat, piling luggage at their feet and in their laps.

"Japanese embassy," Saitou directed, and Sano felt a twinge of pity as the bearer grunted, straining to get the calash moving under their combined weight, but once the vehicle was rolling, the man seemed well enough able to bear the burden.

Sano shifted the duffle in his lap and stretched out his left arm behind Kenshin's head along the back of the seat. The city was a mixture of the exotic architecture that Sano assumed to be of Indian origin and the more austere buildings of European design that he'd seen the likes of in Japan in the Dutch quarters and the English embassy houses. The natives were dark skinned and round eyed, the women exotically alluring with their graceful movement and their colorful sari's. He turned his head more than once to follow the passage of native lovely.

Kenshin was watching too, but not so much the women as the lay of the streets, the way the crowd moved and the number of British soldiers with their ever-present firearms strolled among unarmed civilians. Kenshin's sword was wrapped in canvas, along with Saitou's, the both of them stuffed inside the largest duffel. Traveling through the streets of this foreign city armed and so traditionally to boot, would have roused suspicion and Saitou was very adamant about avoiding trouble of the public nature. Saitou preferred to precipitate very private trouble in the dead of night.

They were deposited finally at the gates of the Japanese embassy. It was a large stone house that hinted at native design and some age. It had probably been a private house of some well to do merchant or politician back before the city had started changing hands from one foreign ruler to the next. It had tall iron gates connected to a tall iron fence which ran the perimeter of the grounds and a great deal of effort had gone into turning those grounds into something more appealing to the Japanese aesthetic.

The guard at the gate ushered them in, exchanging courteous nods with Saitou and ignoring Sano and Kenshin altogether as they followed with the bulk of the luggage in Saitou's footsteps.

"Why doesn't he carry his share?" Sano groused, overburdened and glaring at Saitou's back.

"He has to make an impression." Kenshin said quietly, sitting down his own burden at the bottom of the steps when Saitou motioned for them to wait.

"What? That he's got servants to lug around his shit?"

"Shush." Kenshin suggested, eyes gone a little narrow and speculative as he watched Saitou introduce himself at the door. The attendant who answered, after exchanging a few words with Saitou bowed his head respectfully a few times before ushering the man in. Saitou beckoned Kenshin and Sano with a flick of his wrist.

"Leave the luggage there. We'll find lodging elsewhere."

Sano grumbled, wondering why they'd lugged it all the way up the walkway then, but kept his silence, climbing the stone steps after Kenshin and entering the embassy. It was very tastefully done, he supposed. A mix of traditional Japanese, a touch of Ceylonese culture and a smattering of the European craze that was presently going through the higher echelons of Japanese society.

The attendant showed them to a small waiting room, and soon after returned, saying that the ambassador would see Saitou. Kenshin and Sano were not invited to attend that meeting. Kenshin seemed unoffended at the exclusion. Sano sat and stewed, glaring at Saitou's retreating back, figuring the smug bastard would probably be plotting things behind their backs. What things he wasn't entirely sure, but knowing Saitou, there were bound to be conspiracies afoot. The whole thing was fishy to him and confusing, politicians and shoguns and merchants and foreigners colluding for the right to dock ships that pretty much were coming into Japanese harbors regularly already. He didn't quite understand who actually wanted these incursions and who didn't and who thought they'd profit over somebody else. It seemed a big mess and he'd rather not know details that would make his spin and wouldn't matter to an honest man who didn't have his hands in other people's business.

Which was why Saitou was all over it, not being honest by any means and always having his nose inserted directly where it didn't belong.

What Kenshin thought - - well, Kenshin had his bland face on - - so who the hell knew what was going on behind those long lashed, violet eyes of his? Kenshin understood more of intrigue than Sano did, though. Having _lived_ more of it during the war. Kenshin understood motivations that baffled Sano, Sano being straightforward and honest.

After about an hour of waiting - - with not even tea being offered to them while they sat - - Saitou came skulking back out, moving past them with barely a jerk of his head to indicate they follow, like mewling servants, in his footsteps.

Sano growled a little, muttering dark things at the narrow eyed bastard's back, but curbed the desire to complain too loudly when Kenshin dusted a light touch across his arm. Warning him to good behavior. He and Kenshin picked up the luggage as a carriage pulled up outside the gates, this one with a horse attached and a wizened little Japanese driver outfitted in English livery, who bowed his head politely to Saitou and gave Sano and Kenshin the evil eye as they piled luggage onto the rack behind the seats. There wasn't room for three on the one bench behind the driver without a lot of squeezing in, so predictably, Sano had to perch on the back, behind the luggage.

He glared at the back of Saitou's head most of the meandering, bumpy way to the lodging the embassy had arranged for them. Down past the crowded main city streets to a quieter neighborhood where palm trees swayed and there were more thatch-roofed buildings than stone faced structures. There were more natives here, than foreigners, or uniformed British soldiers.

Men that walked bare chested, with short sari's around their hips, women with bared middles and sun darkened skin going about daily errands. Darker skinned than Kenshin or him. Rounder eyed. But over all a pretty people, Sano decided. Their inn was a low, thatch roofed affair shaded by trees. Tall plaster walls separated it from the street. A native boy came running out to meet them when the carriage pulled up outside the front gate. Saitou stepped down, taking in the street while he lit up a cigarette, waiting for the luggage to be off loaded. Sano let the kid struggle to haul it down, finished playing servant to Saitou.

Saitou said something in a language Sano didn't understand. Sinhala, Saitou had said the native language was, on the ship, when he'd been about trying to teach them a spattering of foreign words.

"I'm not sharing another room with you," Sano stated and Saitou barely flicked an eye at him, so Sano felt the need to expand. "Had enough of the stench of your tobacco on the ship. Not to mention your damned sour personality."

"There's room in the stable. You're better suited for a stall," Saitou commented and Sano bristled, before Kenshin stepped between them, calm and cool and slim, in his cotton gi, a few strands of flyaway red hair escaped from the loose tail at his neck. A lot longer, that hair, than it had been when Sano had first stumbled upon him.

Kenshin, he very much wanted to share a room with. A room preferably with some sort of door with a lock, where Kenshin wouldn't be afraid of unwanted persons walking in at delicate moments. Where Sano might steal a few more fleeting moments of something that he might not see again once Kenshin found Kaoru. He held no illusions. Between the two of them he knew very well who Kenshin would choose. Almost a man might wish the girl never found and his own fortunes improved- - except - - except that sat wrong with him. And there was a kid involved - - and damn, but he didn't want to think about it. About what would happen once they'd found Kaoru. Easier not to. Easier to live in the here and now and take what he could when he could.

"Saitou," Kenshin said softly, looking up under his lashes at a man considerably taller. "If there are plans, I'd very much like to know them."

Saitou took a long drag off his tobacco stick, then shrugged, tossed it onto the dirt road, and strode into the yard behind the gates. They followed, having little enough choice but to trail him like dogs on the heels of their master. There was a long teak desk with a steward behind it, alerted of their arrival by the boy maybe. A room to the left that might have been a tea room, there were mats and low tables, suggesting very much that this was an establishment that catered to visitors more eastern than western. It made his stomach rumble, and his thoughts drift to the notion of sampling native dishes. He was ever open to the possibility of discovering savory new foods.

Saitou conferred with the steward and shortly thereafter the boy appeared again to help lug the bags and Saitou's trunk to rooms which lay in out buildings across a well manicured yard. They had one of their own, small and plain, but clean. The sort of room servant's might get while their master lounged in more luxurious environs.

Sano couldn't complain much. They'd stayed in worse by far these last weeks. It was a mish mash of cultures, a hard backed English chair and stilt legged table with an oil lamp. A basin with water, and a paper screen for privacy. There were low futons with thick mattresses and soft western pillows, instead of Japanese headrests, which honestly, Sano rather appreciated. He'd enjoyed that bed with its soft mattress and its plush pillows in the inn in Manila. He'd enjoyed more what they'd done in it.

Saitou was avoiding the whole of the truth, of that Kenshin was sure. It was no surprise, Saitou being Saitou, and Saitou's goals broader and probably considerably more intricate than Kenshin's own. Kenshin had not gone into this, in Saitou's company, expecting anything else. But he was as willing to use Saitou and Saitou's resources as much as Saitou was willing to use him and his. Which made, at the very least, an uneasy alliance. It always had.

Still, he'd like to know what Saitou had learned, after an hour in the company of the ambassador. There were things a man with limited resources might never learn if not for connections in high places. So cultivating Saitou, being reasonable with Saitou and courteous to Saitou was no great sacrifice, despite Sano's thoughts on the subject.

He knocked on Saitou's door, in the larger bungalow across from the one he and Sano had been shown. Saitou opened the door, glanced over his shoulder at Sano's sulking figure before ushering them in.

"The ambassador is putting out feelers," Saitou informed him before he could ask. "One has to be circumspect when inquiring too boldly into the activities of the English here."

"Winter? Does he know of him?"

"He does not, but the man is a merchant and not nobility, so that means nothing. There are no doubt many merchants that escape the attention of our esteemed ambassador."

"The ship? Is it in harbor? I assume you acquired that information before we left the dock."

Saitou's mouth twitched, nothing so mundane as a smile. "No. Not under the name that it left Japan under, at any rate. But this man we are after is a very clever man."

Kenshin clenched his fists, a sudden surge of frustration welling. What if it weren't here? What if they had followed the wrong trail?

Saitou took a drag of his cigarette, at ease when Kenshin felt the inescapable need to move. To do something. Anything.

"Patience, Himura. When I know, you'll know."

Kenshin inclined his head, forcing that smile he used as a mask for darker things.

"Of course." He half bowed, and Sano muttered angrily behind him, something of not trusting politicians in general and Saitou in particular. Saitou ignored him.

His sword was in the bag with Saitou's and he retrieved it, slipping past Saitou as he did, retrieving another something from Saitou's person as he did. He might have felt guilt over it, never even in less than fortunate times enjoying the mantle of thief, even if he'd worn the one of assassin, but he trusted Saitou to let him know the things he needed not at all. To discover for himself he'd need proper funds and Sano had eaten or drank or gambled away what they'd had between Tokyo and here.

Back to their own room, and Sano expelled a breath and a curse with Saitou's name attached. "I don't trust that narrow eyed bastard to tell us anything."

"No," Kenshin agreed, skimming a hand along the hilt of the sakabatou before leaning it in a corner.

Sano paced a few spaces, throwing out long arms in frustration. "So - -? What do you want to do?"

Kenshin turned a somewhat less blatantly false smile to him. "Lunch would be nice."

Sano blinked, not expecting that of him.

"Really?" There was an endearing note of hopefulness in his voice. Sano was so very much more honest than he ever had been in the things that motivated him. Straight forward and loyal, despite all his bluster and bluff. And young. Still very young.

Kenshin stared at him a moment, snared by a sudden wash of grief. He'd backed himself into a box these last weeks. A box with no easy way out, with Kaoru on the one side and Sano on the other. When he found her, and he would, he wouldn't lie to her. He couldn't. He'd tell her what he'd done. He'd endure her wrath, her hurt, whatever she wished to throw at him. If she wanted him gone, he'd go. If not - - then there would be Sano to deal with. Sano who he wasn't sure if he could let simply disappear again into the unknown.

There was no way out. No solution he could see that didn't involve pain and suffering, hurt and betrayal. His own fault. His own weakness. If he could have taken it all upon himself and spared the two of them, he would have. He doubted it would be that simple.

All he knew how to do was move forward, to find the man who'd taken her and Kenji, to get them back and to make him pay. And somewhere along the way, somewhere between that rainy night in Tokyo when they'd first been taken and here - - that vow he'd made so long ago not to shed mortal blood had fractured. Whether it broke entirely - - well, that depended entirely on Winter and what harm he'd done to Kaoru and Kenji. She might just hate him for that failing as well as the other.

"So I saw a place on the way here," Sano was saying, drawing him out of dour musings. "That smelled like it might be worth visiting."

"Hn. I was thinking, maybe, a tavern." Kenshin walked out of the room before Sano could gape at him in surprise.

"You're kidding me?" Sano trailed him out. Kenshin was not generally the one out of the two of them that suggested visiting taverns.

Kenshin waited until they were out on the street, amidst the traffic of mid-day, pedestrians and mule carts, vendors hauling along their wares, the occasional pair of uniformed English guardsmen, before he said. "We need sources of our own, Sano."

Sano stuffed hands into his pockets, thinking that over. "Yeah. Okay. Who?"

"Someone who speaks the language here as well as our own. Someone familiar with the underbelly of this city."

"Ah," Sano's eyes sparked, finally getting it. "The sort of someone you might find loitering in a tavern."

Well Sano might know, having spent no small bit of his own youth doing just that, mingling with miscreants and layabouts that always seemed to know things honest, hard working folk had no notion of.

"We'll need money," Sano said. "Doubt information's any freer here than at home."

Kenshin jingled the little leather purse he'd liberated from Saitou and Sano's eyes widened.

"Where'd you - -? Shit - - you lifted that from Saitou? And got away with it?"

"I had a need."

Sano laughed, greatly amused at any misfortune suffered by Saitou.

There were no shortages of taverns, and Ceylon was sprawling and myriad in its gathering spots. The ones that catered to the English and the merchant classes they avoided, touring the lower rent establishments, where Ceylonese and Indian, Chinese and Japanese patrons frequented.

Sano mingled well, whether he spoke the language or not, as at home here as he was at any place that served liquor. Kenshin quietly observed, as easy in the shadows as Sano was carousing at the bar. So, so easy when he had a goal, to blend with the darkness and seek prey. No, not prey, simply a suitable source of information that might lead him to what he sought.

He flexed his hand, feeling the lingering stiffness, but the pain was tolerable. Easily ignored. The scar was flesh colored now, a little shiny. Tight, but he was working that out. Sano had proved a good nurse, following Miss Megumi's orders to a T. Weeks shipboard had gone no small way to healing his wounds. He'd have a few more scars, but he could hold a sword. Another few months and he might not notice the wounds had ever been there.

Third tavern, and no few drinks and two suppers on Sano's part, and they found a boy. A young half Ceylonese, half Japanese street kid that couldn't have been much older than twelve. Sly eyed and quick fingered, with that belief that the young tended towards, of invincibility. He tried to pickpocket Kenshin's pick pocketed purse. Kenshin caught his bony wrist, twisted it with a patient smile of reprimand, while the kid cursed at him with words he was very well familiar with.

"So, looks like you found a translator, huh?" Sano sauntered up and the kid cursed twice as loud, drawing attention.

"Do the authorities here take kindly to thieves stealing the purses of tourists?" Kenshin asked pleasantly and the kid snapped his mouth shut, glaring between them.

"Fuck you," the boy muttered and Kenshin pressed the bones of his wrist a little more sharply, smile never wavering from his lips. The boy reminded him somewhat of Yahiko, when he'd been that age. Surely and overly overconfident of his own abilities.

"That's impolite. Who taught you manners?"

"I'll give it a shot," Sano offered, leaning down, glaring into the eyes of a kid that was half a head shorter than Kenshin. "I'm all about manners."

The boy drew back, Sano's height and Sano cracking the knuckles of his big hand proving intimidating.

"Perhaps," Kenshin said genially, the less visibly threatening of the two. "You'd like to earn coin instead of stealing it?"

The boy scowled. "I don't do that. Pervert."

Kenshin felt his smile straining. Sano snorted, grabbed the kid by the ruff of his threadbare collar and hauled him into the narrow alley between buildings.

The boy's name was Kai. His mother was Japanese, lured away from home in her youth by a charming Ceylonese sailor. If he saw his father once in a year, it was a miraculous thing. The boy claimed sullenly that it was no loss of his.

Kenshin produced a small coin from Saitou's purse and the boy became more obliging. Most certainly he knew the lay of the city. When the work was available he ran errands from one end of Colombo to the other. His mother did laundry in the house of an English merchant and took work from many others.

"Where do they live, the wealthy Englishmen?" Kenshin asked, and the boy shrugged, waving a hand. "Colpetty. A lot of them along Galle Road. The richest out past the city in walled estates."

"Show us."

Having nothing better to do, the boy did. Mollified by the lure of coin, he made an informative tour guide, parting with information easily. Colpetty seemed the hub of English occupancy, an area crowded with shops and stone buildings and paved streets with gas lamps on the corners. A great many of the natives doing business here were dressed in western clothing.

"I don't know of a Merchant called Winter," the boy admitted. "But the English come and go as if they own the island."

Which of course, the English thought they did. Men of the west, Kenshin had discovered had the tendency to assume other civilizations beneath them, and fair game to manipulate or conquer. He wished very much the Meiji government had not welcomed them into Japan.

They spent the day touring the haunts of the English, and the boy, at the lure of more coin promised to discover what he could of Winter, or a japans lady of quality that might have come to the island. Winter had a purpose and Kenshin had not forgotten. Kaoru had a part to play in his plan and if he were to pass her off as the daughter of a man of power, he'd not slip her in under cover of night.

There was nothing to do but return to the inn after they'd set the boy on his task. Nothing but to let Sano draw him to the tearoom off the main lobby. The tea was strong and dark, and the food spiced liberally with curry. Sano liked it. Kenshin preferred subtler flavors. Sano downed a locally brewed lager, then another that smelled of cinnamon and spices and made Sano sigh and wistfully consider a third before Kenshin had sat all he could, and rose, leaving a few coins on the table, and returning to the room.

They saw no light from Saitou's bungalow in passing, and assumed he was about whatever it was Saitou found to occupy himself at night. No good things, Kenshin was sure.

Sano lit the oil lamp, when Kenshin would have done very well in darkness, and rustled around the room, while Kenshin sat cross legged on the futon, thinking dark thoughts.

She was here. She and Kenji. They had to be. They'd made good time, Saitou had said, and despite his injuries and the time he'd lost - - too much time - - there still might only be a week - - a little more than a week between them. Wishful thinking, but the other option was admitting they might be far beyond his reach.

Sano had rustled as much as he could, and finally sat down nest to Kenshin, legs sprawled onto the floor before him. "So, what do you think Saitou's up to?"

A great many things, no doubt. Kenshin shrugged minutely. "Much the same as us, I would guess. Information gathering."

"Hn. Think he missed that purse?"

"Eventually."

Sano sat there, fuel for conversation dried up. He shifted a little and his thigh touched Kenshin's knee. Deliberate move.

Kenshin shut his eyes. He couldn't, not with her possibly on this island - -in this very city - - with him. He'd betrayed the trust she had in him enough. He'd betrayed Sano's trust enough.

"Sano," he said softly. "We cannot."

He felt Sano tense. Felt the very aura of the air around him go still.

"Yeah. Sure." After a moment, and Sano pushed himself up. Unrolled his own futon and sat down with his back to Kenshin, busying himself with unrolling the cloth around his wrists. Offended. Hurt. And why would he not be, Kenshin having very much been willing to engage since they'd boarded the ship in Manila.

Kenshin's fault. It felt like knives slicing him up from the inside out. He couldn't understand how he'd been such a fool. How he'd been so weak to allow things that would only hurt the people he loved.

He bowed his head, while Sano sat there, simmering, so obviously simmering and imagined her expression when he told her. Imagined her eyes wide with pain, brimming tears, imagined Kenji at her side, not understanding the depths of his father's betrayal. Imagined Sano's back, at the rail of a ship, sailing out of his life leaving him to face a marriage that would never be the same. His choices. His misdeeds. No blame but his own.

"She's here - - somewhere, Sano," he whispered in the flickering light of the lantern.

Sano said nothing.

"I cannot - - with her so close." Irrational excuse. It made no difference how far a distance she'd been when he'd made his choices.

The linen over Sano's shoulders were taut, the faintest trembling of muscle. His hair was a dark collection of messy locks, but so much softer than one might think.

"You know what I wished?" Sano said, low, rough voice. "Just for a moment wished?"

"What?"

"That you'd never find her. That you and me - -" he broke off, showing Kenshin half a profile in the shadows. "But I don't want that. I want that girl and your kid back safe at the dojo - - and that just sucks for me - - because there's no place there for me anymore that I can see."

His voice broke a little, and Kenshin did, clenching his fists, feeling stinging wetness at the corners of his eyes.

He rose, dropped to his knees behind Sano, pressing his forehead against Sano's hair, an arm around Sano's neck. Sano lifted a hand, fingers biting into Kenshin's forearm. One of them was trembling.

Sano spun him around, dragging him to the futon under Sano's weight, Sano's arms fast around him, Sano's face in the crook of his neck. Lay there for a long moment, breathing in the scent of each other, the feel of hearts thudding beneath flesh and bone. Sano's hands moved to his hair, freeing it from the tie that held it, threading his big fingers and grasping tight, immobilizing Kenshin's head.

He looked down, eyes dark and serious. Not a look Sano usually wore. "I will fight for you. Not sure how, against a wife and a kid - - but I'll figure a way."

Kenshin laughed, miserably, bleakly and Sano cut it off, mouth over his. Devouring kiss, like he was staking a claim. Kenshin couldn't stop it. Didn't want to stop it. It was relief when Sano pinned his wrists and licked his way down his throat, nipping at collarbone, nuzzling aside the thin material of the gi and fastening his mouth to an already hard nipple.

He gasped, arching up, wrapping his legs around Sano's waist, wanting him closer. Wanting all of Sano he could get. He loved Kaoru, he cherished Kaoru and the things she represented - - the life she represented - - but she didn't make his body scream like Sano did. She didn't wipe everything clean, everything blank and white and blazing with sheer sensation when she slid inside him, remaking him for if only a few precious moments into something other than what he was.

"It'll work out. I'll make it work out," Sano was saying, afterward, damp, naked flesh against damp, naked flesh. Sano's arms tight around him, his face pressed into Sano's neck while he shuddered. It took a while before his mind started working enough to comprehend Sano's optimism.

Kenshin didn't believe it.

Chapter Twenty-one

Sano slept afterwards, easy in his slumber. Sano never let little things like guilt or emotional turmoil disturb either appetite or sleep.

Kenshin envied him that, lying awake well into dawn. The muffled patter of rain on the thatch roof was a constant, drowning out the chatter of nighttime insects. Once he tensed at the almost imperceptible sound of a body moving outside, but it was only Saitou, he thought, when the door across the walk opened and closed. Sano never moved, one long arm draped across Kenshin's stomach, one leg curled over his thighs, the warmth of his body enough to discard covers altogether. The tickle of his breath against the side of Kenshin's temple was pleasant.

His utter quiet was. Soothing in a way different than sleeping with Kaoru had been. Igniting different things inside him than she had. They both gave him peace of a sorts, though Sano's was tinged with the guilt of betrayal. They both chased away the red stained veil that was always with him. She with the mantel of normality, offering him the chance to be what he'd never been before her - - a simple man. She gave him someone to protect. She let him be simply a husband and a father that helped maintain a dojo for a living instead of darker things. Sano - - Sano didn't offer so much of that façade. Sano just made it easier to bear. Sano made him not hate so much the parts of him that were so ingrained that he'd never completely shed them. He hid things from Kaoru - - things he never wanted her to know. There was no need with Sano. Sano knew things, admitted on the hard roads they traveled together that he'd never admitted to anyone else. And Sano didn't judge. Sano had his own demons.

He only found sleep after the rains stopped and dim grey light began seeping through the cracks in the window shades. He was half aware of Sano shifting, rising, but the sleep that he'd finally found, dreamless as it was, was too precious to surrender. Eventually, Sano came back, settled down next to him and he sank back down again into dreamless void.

Next he opened his eyes, the light coming in through the shades was bright and Sano was gone from the room. It was well into the day, if he were any judge and he'd slept later than his habit. He pushed himself up, rotating the shoulder with the healing bullet hole. The one in his leg he hardly noticed, but the shoulder was stiff in the mornings and it took a little while to work it out. He ran a hand through his hair, finger combing it into a semblance of coherency before gathering it up again in fastening it into a tail. Not as long as it had been when he'd been a rurouni, but a hands width longer than when he'd left home.

Sano had a fascination, that he'd admitted, half embarrassed, when he'd had his hands tangled in it, that he'd had since the less than peaceful day they'd met. Kenshin hadn't had a clue. But then sometimes the interpersonal things escaped him.

He dressed again in simple clothing, cool, thin linen that alleviated the humid heat of the island. Sano was not within the environs of the inn, nor was Saitou. He held little concern. It was a city, foreign and new and Sano had a love for experiencing new things. Kenshin thought, while he waited for word from the boy, that he might partake of one of the Ceylonese bathhouses. After a week ship bound he felt the dire need.

Afterwards, he took a simple breakfast and walked the path the boy had taken them yesterday, careful to dip his head, letting overlong bangs obscure his face and give courteous right of way to the patrolling English soldiers with their crisp uniforms and their ever present rifles. In his peasant garments and his alacrity to give right of way they never looked twice at him. No one remembered the servile.

The boy had said there were estates further out, the homes of the wealthiest of the British occupiers. Merchant lords or English power brokers, whose domains overlooked the vast tea crops and the dark line of ever encroaching jungle beyond the fields. He spent a while, never allowing himself to seem without purpose, never arousing interest in those he passed, memorizing the lay of the streets, the paths in and out of ally ways, places the patrolling soldiers liked to pause and talk among themselves, partaking of the same tobacco that Saitou so liked. If he came back in the dark of night, he'd know his way.

He went back to the inn well into the afternoon. Found Sano leaning against the wall outside it, flirting, despite the gulf in language, with a pretty Ceylonese girl. Sano looked over her glossy head at Kenshin's approach. He spat out the reed he'd been chewing on and grinned at the girl, pushing himself off the wall and strolling leisurely down the dirt street to intersect Kenshin's path. Fell in beside him, thumbs hooked in the waistband of his trousers.

"Find out anything interesting?"

"Only that there are a great many soldiers with guns patrolling Colpetty. The English have a firm grip on this city."

"Hn. Somebody came round and met with Saitou."

Kenshin canted Sano a look, inquiring.

Sano shrugged. "He left with the guy. Didn't feel the need to tell me where he was going or what it was about."

"No, I don't imagine he would have."

Worrying what Saitou was up to, or what Saitou was hiding from him would get him nothing but strained nerves. Better to accept the notion that even though they were not exactly working at cross purposes, that their paths had diverged.

The boy, Kai, found them at supper, eating curried fish and rice in an establishment a few doors down from the inn. He stood at the door, waited until Kenshin looked up, noting his presence, before jerking his head and retreating back outside.

He waited outside, against the side of the building.

"So," the boy said. "Found out some stuff."

"Yeah?" Sano asked, leaning a shoulder against the wall next to him.

The boy gave Sano a smirk, then canted his dark head at Kenshin. "Money first."

Sano laughed curtly. "What do you think, we're stupid? I found out a bunch of stuff today, too, but none of it worth anybody paying for it."

"Sano," Kenshin could appreciate Sano's skills at haggling, for surely they were greater than his own, but this was too important to risk. He tossed the boy a silver coin. "There's another if your information is useful."

The boy stared the silver lustfully for a moment, before saying. "Yeah, well, you were looking for a Japanese lady, right? The cook that works with my mother talked to another cook who says her master had a guest last week, that he told her to prepare a proper Japanese dinner for. Japanese _nobility_, the cook says."

"Last week?" He kept control of his breathing, kept himself from clenching and unclenching his fists. "And was she accompanied by a pale haired merchant?"

The boy shrugged. "There were guests. Cook was in the kitchen. Didn't get a look at them all."

"A child?" There was always that tremulous hope. That confirmation.

The boy shook his head. "She didn't mention a kid. Just the lady that her master went to trouble to impress."

"Where?"

"House of Lord Kilbourne at the end of Galle. He's a bigwig - - owns a bunch of ships and has the Lord Chancellor over for tea twice a month, word is."

Kenshin had gone quiet and serious since talking with the boy. Not the quiet and serious he'd been since Sano had found him - - where he was worried and trying hard to focus on the goal of tracking Kaoru and Kenji - - when he'd had injuries that should have had him out for the count. But the deadly quiet, hard eyed serious he got when he'd been pushed to the point where the wonderer façade began to crack and the Battousaibegan to seep through. That scary look he got that anyone with half a brain had the common sense to back off and give him lots of room around.

Sano never had been strong in the common sense department. Kenshin had gone back to the room then, not speaking a word, had sat there, kneeling on the hard wood floor with the sword across his thighs with a narrow eyed look that invited no comers.

"So what the hell are we gonna do? We don't know if it was even her."

The inquiry of which, after Sano could stand it no more, had gained Sano a slow flick of shadowed eyes and finally. ""I pay the house of this English lord a visit."

Sano could get behind that idea. "So when do we go?"

"_We_ don't."

It took Sano a moment to get it. His exclusion. "The hell! You think after all this I'm just gonna let you pull something like this without me?"

"I'm not giving you a choice."

Sano clenched his fists until knuckles popped. Pissed. Just pissed off that Kenshin could discount him so. "What? You don't think I'm up to it? You're the one that's off his game. I'm damn sure on mine."

Kenshin rose, one fluid movement, and almost Sano took a step back, on the off chance that Kenshin had lost his grip on sanity and decided to prove Sano wrong. But he only slid the sword through his belt, giving Sano a hard look. "If my goal were to take on the whole of the house, your company would be welcome, Sanosuke. I have quieter intentions. I simply want to see this house that she might have been."

Sano drew himself up, more offended than before. "Are you saying I'm only good for busting heads? I can sneak around if I want. And if you're just going to look around, why do you need that?" Sano jabbed a finger at the sword.

Kenshin looked at him a moment, then he half smiled, inclining his head, granting Sano that one. But Sano didn't believe the smile. It didn't come near to reaching Kenshin's eyes.

"Grant me this, Sano. You come, and keep watch for Soldiers outside and if there is a need, you'll hear it."

"Right, because you always make such a big racket when you work," Sano said sullenly.

Kenshin's mouth twitched again, this time Sano thought a little of that humor might have reached his eyes.

It was fully night when they left, slipping through dark streets, avoiding the lampposts with their flickering lights. Kenshin knew the way as unerringly as if they'd been traveling the streets of Tokyo. Sano was all turned around in the depth of night with the landmarks he'd only glimpsed once obscured by darkness.

The boy had told them which house, the number, and the description. A big stone mansion with tall stone walls surrounding it. A garden behind it, and an ally between it and the neighboring house. Beyond that was a causeway with old mangroves leaning over a narrow canal. They waited there, in the black shadows for a good while, listening to the sounds of things sliding in and out of the water, of the occasional clip of hooves as some late night traveler passed on the street, or the quieter sound of booted feet, as soldiers patrolled.

Finally, after about an hour, when the sky had actually begun to turn from inky black to purple, Kenshin rose.

"Be careful, damnit," Sano warned softly.

Kenshin nodded, almost indistinguishable from the night in his dark clothing. If it weren't for the pale of his face, he might have blended entirely. He made no sound at all, not even a rustle of cloth, when he moved. And if Sano had blinked, he might have missed entirely him gliding up that wall and disappearing over the top of it to the garden on the other side.

Not nearly so off his game as Sano had accused. Maybe not off it all, after the hardships he'd suffered. Pain, Sano had discovered the hard way, tended to bring out the best in some men.

The garden behind the house was lush and well tended, secluded from the rest of the wall by tall stone walls. The lights in the house were dark, snuffed out some while ago. Time enough for the inhabitants to have fallen into slumber. He was no stranger to skulking in the night. To sliding invisibly into the places he had no honest reason at being. He had been given no few missions, when he'd had a master whose word to a samurai was law, which had been distinctly lacking in the sort of honor a man practiced in the light of day. In his prime, the ninjas of Akabeko had had nothing on him.

He wasn't here to take heads. He'd just as well not have to draw the sword at his side at all and from the heaviness of the sleepers here, he doubted he would. He simply needed to see for himself if there were trace of her here. To see if, by some miraculous stroke of luck that he seemed long overdue, if she were still here. And failing that, perhaps to see what clue of Winter might linger. Her mark on an agreement, he had said, when he'd been taunting Kenshin. He needed the legitimacy of the daughter of a shogun to fool a business partner into complacency. The world had been turned upside down in the need for that charade.

So he invaded this house, with its tall glass windows and its rooms full of western furniture and sought a trace of what he hoped for. The servants slept upstairs, in a narrow attic area, all of them Ceylonese. A floor down, on the second story were more fashionable rooms. The great one on the end, issued the sound of two sleeping bodies. The lord of this place. Kai had said Lord Kilbourne. The other rooms were empty. There was a cellar, full of racks of wine and crates of unknown things, but no life save for mice.

Back up stairs again, to a great room lined with western books and a huge desk sporting orderly stacks of paper, pens and inkwell, an open book with incomprehensible English writing. He shuffled through a few things, frustrated at his lack of comprehension for what he looked at, until he found a folder tied with a ribbon, holding several pieces of parchment. All save one written in English, and that one, in neat Japanese. A great deal of formal language, detailing trade agreements, which he only skimmed the barest portion of. There was a mark at the body, a signature in a less precise hand than the one that had written the document. Not Kaoru's name, but it could have been her messy scrawl. She hadn't the patience for flowing, neat penmanship.

Kenshin closed his eyes, forcing a series of calm breaths before rolling the papers and slipping them into his noragi. There would be evidence here, that men who might prefer their grand plans not see the light of day, would bargain to keep secret.

He stood for a moment, staring towards the second story. There was a man up there who had seen her. Who might very well know where she had been taken.

He was moving before he'd fully decided on a course of action. Up the stairs to the thick door of the master's bedroom. This might be a mistake, a terrible mistake, setting the whole of the island's authorities on alert - - but again, this lord was part of a pact seeking to undermine competitors and countrymen in pursuit of lucrative Japanese trade. He might be a man to whom silence was more valuable than seeking justice.

The door was unlocked, the room large and silent, save for the stuttering snore of the man on the bed. Big man, little of it muscle. Receding hairline off set by thick sideburns that reached the round jowls at his jaw. There was a smaller figure asleep with him. Dark hair, dark skin of one naked shoulder, and the small frame of a girl. A very young girl. Kenshin clenched a fist around the hilt of the sword. Angry to the point his vision narrowed, thinking of the things Winter had said he'd do to Kaoru. The 'friends' of his that would enjoy a young, Asian mistress. And if she'd played her part already - -

He pushed the curl of revulsion away, forced it back to a place that kept it from interfering with his present goals. Drew the sakabatou, flipping it about, gently laying the sharp edge against the rolls of flesh at the Englishman's neck.

Cold steel against flesh was an unparalleled way of rousing a man. Small, pale eyes fluttered open, filled with disorientation, with fear as Kenshin pressed the blade closer, leaning in and whispering 'shu', a universal suggestion of quiet.

The man lay still, very much aware of the death at his throat, trying to squint through the darkness and make out his assailant. The girl stirred at his side, smothering a gasp as she saw the glint of sword, saw Kenshin looming over the bed.

He ticked a finger at her, one sharp motion that stayed her, and she cowered, clutching the sheet to her breast. Very young indeed. Two witnesses, but it was dark enough that everything bled into.

"Do you speak Japanese?" he asked. It would surely be a difficult conversation if the man did not.

The fat man stared at him, sweating, belly heaving under the sheet.

"I do," the girl whispered.

Good enough. Kenshin spared her another glance. If she were fourteen, he'd be surprised. Old enough to marry at home, but with this old, fat Englishman, it just seemed obscene.

"Ask him of the daughter of Lord Erizawa, who came in the company of the Englishman Winter."

The girl did, haltingly and the fat lord's mouth thinned. He said something, careful with his words, careful of the edge against his throat.

"He - - he doesn't know what you speak of," the girl stammered. "He - - he says the English authorities will hunt you down and execute you for this."

Kenshin smiled, let the blade bite into flesh and a trickle of darkness seeped across pale skin. "He lies."

The man said something, sharp, panicked, trying to raise a hand to push the blade away. Kenshin clucked his tongue, increasing the pressure of the blade.

"Wait," the girl said, her fear as sharp as her master's. "He says wait."

The Englishman babbled something and the girl translated. "He says she was a guest in his house, this lady. But that she has gone. Left to return home to the house of her father."

"That too, is a lie," Kenshin whispered. "Tell him I know of this scheme of Winter's and his wealthy backers. Tell him that there will be no legitimate backing in Japan. Tell him this man Winter is a liar and a cheat and that the Lady he presented was no daughter of Erizawa and that Erizawa knows it."

She blinked at him owlishly, and awkwardly tried to repeat all that. Kilbourne's eyes darted to her, narrowing, then back to Kenshin.

"He asks," the girl said, after the man had hissed a few words at her. "What you want?"

"I want this girl and I want Winter."

"Who are you?" She translated, but Kenshin had actually halfway understood that question, remembering the remnants of Winter's lessons in English.

"Better for you not to know," he said, voice soft and dangerous, letting himself feel the cold indifference he'd once out of necessity, clung to.

There'd been a time he could have backed an aspiring opponent off without drawing his blade. Just a look, and that quiet, deadly aura of a true swordsman whose blade had tasted no small bit of blood. The girl flinched and huddled into her pillows, the fat man did as much as he was able.

"He does not know," the girl whimpered. "He says he does not know where this man is, but he will find out, if you spare his life."

The fear was genuine. Kenshin could scent it, rolling in waves off the man. Whether the offer was, was another matter. Kenshin slipped the roll of documents from his shirt and the man's eyes tracked to them.

"Tell him, there are people very interested in this deal of Winter's. Very interested in those colluding with him. These papers would hold great interest for them. This man lied to you. What loyalty do you owe him?"

The Englishman shook his head as much as he dared with the edge of a blade at this throat after the girl had repeated that. "None. None. He'll find out what he can, he promises."

Kenshin held no faith at all in the promises of westerners, but it was a start.

Sano was pacing the canal when Kenshin came out. Kenshin simply nodded to him and Sano followed silently along the bank behind the row of houses until they were far enough away to slow to a unassuming walk along a narrow side street where there were no streetlamps to illuminate the shadows.

"So what the hell?" Sano had held his silence as long as he was capable. "You said ten minutes in and out. That was a lot damn longer than ten minutes. I was about to come in after you."

"There was a change of plan."

"No shit. What happened?"

"I had a conversation with Lord Kilbourne."

Sano stopped short and stared at him through the darkness. "Of for shit's sake, Kenshin. You blow our cover?"

Kenshin lifted a brow. "We had a cover?"

"We didn't have the law after us." Sano complained.

"We don't have it now. Lord Kilbourne understands, I think, the consequences of alerting the authorities."

"Oh yeah?" It was Sano's turn to lift both brows skeptically. "What consequences? "

Kenshin pulled out the roll of documents. "She was there, Sano. Winter had her sign his treaty, as well as this lord and most likely the others participating in the plan."

"And that's it? This treaty everybody's all riled up over?"

Kenshin smiled.

"Saitou'd love to get his hands on that," Sano predicted.

Saitou most certainly would, though Kenshin had no intention, at the moment. of giving it to him. Not when it was leverage he could use to find Kaoru and Kenji.

"That he would."

"But you're not gonna give it to him."

"Lord Kilbourne would prefer very much not. Lord Kilbourne will go to lengths to keep this from the hands of his government and ours."

"Soooo - - you're blackmailing the guy?"

Kenshin considered. It wasn't a tactic he'd stooped to before, but he supposed that was as accurate a term as any.

"Hey, its fine with me," Sano said, clapping a hand on his shoulder as they walked, when Kenshin didn't respond. "You do what you have to do. The bastard that took Kaoru sure isn't practicing restraint."

Two days. Two frustrating days, with no word, from either their own streetwise source or any contact from Lord Kilbourne. Almost Kenshin was ready to venture back into that grand house and inquire none too politely if the man had misjudged the seriousness of his request. But, no English guardsmen had come looking for them, and on his brief encounters with Saitou, no mention was made of waves made or complaints made to the Japanese embassy, so one had to assume that Kilbourne had kept his silence regarding Kenshin's visit. Which meant he understood what was at stake.

Saitou had, upon one meeting in the inn's tea house, given the both of them long looks, before settling his gaze on Kenshin and remarking, that he hadn't realized their funds so vast and suggested he not let Sano gamble them away.

Sano, predictably had taken offense, entirely forgetting that those funds had belonged to Saitou. Saitou had simply sucked on his cigarette and remarked to Kenshin that his hands must be healing nicely if his fingers were so nimble.

Sano had taken offense at that as well - - it seemed to be a morning for Sano to be prickly - - and sullenly demanded of Saitou why he assumed Kenshin was light fingered and not him.

One had to shut one's eyes and sigh at the pride prompted blatant admission of guilt and thank the powers that be that they were far from home where Saitou held no real power of enforcing justice.

Saitou did have the power to piss Sano off though, by lifting a dubious brow, flicking his ash almost onto Sano's bowl of half eaten breakfast and scoffing at the notion that Sano had the ability to be nimble about anything.

It dissolved rapidly from there, and Kenshin, whose patience was usually a great deal more durable than it was at present, silently rose and distanced himself from Saitou baiting and Sano snapping like a hungry snakehead.

It was misting outside. A fine sort of glistening precipitation that was incongruous with the sun shining down between gaps in the light cloud cover. He didn't mind. It felt cool on his face, and slowly dampened the thin cloth of his noragi. He headed dockside, walked the busy street where races of all ethicality mixed. Men, women, sailors, peasants, merchants. By far a headier mix than even the progressive Meiji government allowed on the streets of Nagasaki where the largest of the ports that catered to foreign merchants was. If Winter and his compatriots both English and Japanese, had their way, Kyoto would be as bustling a foreign port as well.

Bound to happen, he supposed. One way or another. He'd rather it was under public control than at the whim of a few wealthy backers pulling strings within the government.

The mist let up and the sun overpowered the clouds, beaming down with relish, drying the puddles and making the mud thick and hard. Kenshin headed back to the inn, and almost didn't recognize the girl who scurried up to him before he reached the gates.

The girl from Kilbourne's bed. It was disconcerting that she'd recognized him before he'd taken note of her, but he supposed of the two of them, he stood out more on these streets. He looked around warily while she bowed her head at him, wringing her hands nervously.

There was no one of note watching them. No one loitering or pausing at all in their commute. Just the girl, with her long hair swinging free and her middle bared by a native sarong.

"Sir - -? You are - - ?" She stammered, perhaps not so sure after all, what he looked like.

He inclined his head, gesturing to the shade of an alley. She looked hesitant to retreat there with him. He'd given her good reason to fear the last they'd met. "You are safe with me," he soothed her, smiling gently.

She took a breath, eyes wide, faltering in her unease. He had a way with children, and she was not much more than a child herself. She moved into the seclusion of the ally, pressing her back against one wall and he urged her to speak with an inquiring look.

"My lord has arranged for you to meet with someone who has the information you seek," she said.

"Who?"

She shook her head helplessly, dark eyes glued to his face. "I do not know. But, you are to go alone, my lord says. The bearer of this information will meet only you in the park on the east side of Beira Lake at noon. If anyone else comes - - they will leave and will not attempt to meet with you again."

"And?"

"That is all I was told." She tried to slip away and he put a hand out, on the wall next to her head. She froze, trembling, and he hissed a breath through his teeth, and stepped back, letting her leave. She was a messenger and not likely to know more than what she'd been told to relay. And little enough information that was. A mysterious meeting in the center of the city. A vastly public place at least, surrounded by businesses frequented by westerners and patrolled by English soldiers. A carefully chosen place as well, that no man who did not wish to end up in English custody, would dare to walk with a blade at his hip.

He looked up at the sky, the sun almost at its apex. Close enough to noon now, that if he hurried, he might just make the lake in time. Just as well not to tell Sano, because he wouldn't agree to not accompany him, and even if he lurked at the edges, he was not adept at blending into the background.

Chapter Twenty-two

Beira Lake sat wide and sparkling, surrounded by green park and public paths, by the fine facades of homes on the one side and the bustling row of shops that catered to the Westerners on the other. At mid-day it drew crowds. Vendors hawking their wares around the edges, native children playing, couples strolling the paths now that the rain had let up, or sitting on benches along the shore, watching small boats drifting in the lake amidst flocks of water fowl. Soldiers - - always English soldiers - - reminding everyone who held power here.

Kenshin walked the path around the lake, watching passerby from under his hair, looking for that tell tale sign of a body who was here for anything but casual enjoyment. He felt the eyes on him, that sixth sense that a man who'd lived by his wits for too many years to ever comfortably dissipate, making the hair on the back of his arms stand up.

There was a man sitting casually on a bench at the lakeshore a paper bag of breadcrumbs at his side that he idly tossed to the greedy birds loitering at the water's edge. Immaculate western suit, cropped pale hair. Kenshin's step faltered - - for a moment it seemed his heart did - - as Winter inclined his head, one brow quirking. Smiling.

Instinct made him reach for a sword that wasn't there. He caught himself, stilling the motion. Stilling everything - - emotion, expression, the rage that wanted to boil up and explode. He stopped, a half dozen paces from the bench, afraid if he allowed himself to get too close, he'd have his hands around this man's throat.

Winter leaned back, draping an arm across the back of the bench, those pale eyes of his boldly assessing. "I wouldn't have believed it, if my own eyes weren't looking upon you. It takes a good deal to impress me, but you standing here, is a testament to tenaciousness. Bravo."

"Where are they?" His voice came out hoarse.

Winter dipped his hand back into the bag, and almost Kenshin expected some weapon, tensed himself to respond to it - - but it was only breadcrumbs that Winter tossed to the fowl. After a moment of watching them gobble down the bread, Winter said.

"Safe. I promised, did I not? I take no pleasure from killing women and children."

"Erizowa's daughter might debate that."

Winter waved a hand, dismissive. "Ah, that. She would have betrayed me. Endangered my carefully wrought plans. She had to go. Your little wife - - so far from home - - is no danger at all. And your child - - he's far too young to even fully understand. He thinks it all a great adventure. Charming lad. Already he speaks passing English. He'll make someone a fine manservant when he's older. She'll make a spirited mistress to a man who prefers his women lively. You'd be surprised how in demand household staff of an 'exotic' nature are these days."

Kenshin went still, that calm he'd forced fracturing, killing cold flowing in from the cracks. So very, very wise of Winter to meet him here, where he wouldn't have gotten two blocks during the light of day with the sword at his hip. He'd have had it at the bastard's throat in the middle of the park, or buried in his black heart, and vows be damned. That Winter could sit there, so outwardly calm and provoke him so - - either the man had lost his grasp on sanity - - or he possessed a self confidence that was wildly over inflated.

Winter canted his head at him, studying him. "Ah, I see it now, those things she told me about you. There is something distinctly hair-raising about that look in your eyes. She had great faith in you, you know, before she thought you dead. She told me what a great mistake I had made, evoking your wrath. But then, once I'd figured out who you were, I'd figured that out myself. I didn't know you'd vowed not to kill again. She's proud of you for that, you know? As if a little judicious killing would stain a man beyond repair. Of course she thinks it might. Not a lot of faith in you in that regard, huh? Just as well for me though. Hard to practice convincing retaliation without the threat of death. Still, I thought it prudent to meet without the benefit of weapons. At heart, I'm a businessman, not a fighter."

Kenshin might argue that point. It felt as if the words were slicing into him with no less accuracy than a well-aimed blade.

"Where are they? Just - - Just tell me where they are?"

"Why should I? I had a profitable venture in the cards, before you decided to screw it up. Lord Kilbourne is not pleased, let me tell you. Your damned fault."

"You're a murderer and a liar. You deserve what you get."

"Pot. Kettle." Winter smiled at him and Kenshin didn't get it. Winter sighed and waved a hand. "I'd wager you've killed far more than I, manslayer. So save your self-righteousness for someone with more blood on their hands than you."

Kenshin took a step towards him, thinking of ways he could hurt this man without a sword in his hands. Winter lifted a brow at him and glanced at a pair of passing English soldiers.

"Your boy has more your look than hers," Winter said, idly. "Your hair. Your eyes. He'll be pretty."

"If you've touched him I won't need a blade to rip you apart. And it won't matter where you are, or who you try to find to protect you," Kenshin said softly.

Winter scoffed. "Do you think me some mewling pervert who preys on children? I assure you my tastes run - - older." He smiled, eyes drifting over Kenshin. "I must say, I like the look of peasant garb on you. "

Kenshin felt the chill of goose pimples on his skin, the sickening lurch of memory of this man's hands on him when he'd been in no condition to protest the indignity. Of this man's sibilant whispers in his ear. A snake. A western snake that sat there at such ease as if perpetrating atrocities was his birthright.

"What do you want?" Kenshin asked softly.

"Those papers you stole for a start. Then I'll consider releasing the girl and your child."

"What sort of fool would I be to trust you at your word when you've proven that honor holds no meaning for you?"

Winter's mouth twitched in a tight smile. "My honor or lack of, is not at issue. Yours is. I think you're a man that will do whatever needs doing to secure the safety of those he loves."

Winter crumpled the bag into a ball, and rose, walking to stand closer to Kenshin than was safe for either one of them. Kenshin tightened his fists, controlling twin urges to step back or drive a fist into any number of places that would cause this man great hurt.

"You understand the nature of men without honor and the things they might do to innocents." Winter said softly, bending his head, leaning close enough that Kenshin felt the warmth of his breath. "You will do what I tell you to do, because you understand the consequences if you do not."

Kenshin stared over his shoulder blindly, the lake a hazy wash of color, not nearly so vivid as he imagined the color of Winter's blood would be.

"Who are your companions?" Winter asked and snapped him away from his visions of death.

When he didn't answer, Winter smiled. "You think I don't have resources on this island? You think the moment I realized someone had arrived that had an interest in my business that I did not know? The older one is some sort of Japanese authority, I'd gather, though he's kept his dealings frustratingly obscure. The other one not so much. Young. Loud. Pretty eyes. Not the boy Kaoru spoke of at the dojo - - the one you gave your precious sword to? Another friend picked up along the way? Tall for a Japanese."

Kenshin said nothing. Threatening the man to stay away from what was his would only assure him that he'd struck a telling blow. "You'll have your documents when I have Kaoru and Kenji."

Winter lifted a brow at him. "Ah, so now we're bargaining. Will you have one of your friends hold them? The dangerous one with connections? What's the point in me having them back if the people I wish to keep them from have already perused them?"

"He hasn't seen them. He won't, if you keep to your word."

Winter sighed. Waved a negligent hand. "As you wish. Unfair of me to want to hold all the cards in our little game, I suppose and I'm feeling generous. I felt bad, that I had to leave you to them. If I'd had the time to spare, I would have given you a much cleaner end than those mountain bandits. I'd have enjoyed that."

Kenshin lowered his head, eyes narrow. He flicked them to the side, glancing at the approach of a pair of English soldiers.

"Where?" he asked, harsh whisper. "Tell me where and I'll bring the papers in exchange for them."

"No bother. I'll have them fetched myself." Winter put a hand on his shoulder, and Kenshin almost struck out at the man for the indignity, but the soldiers hadn't passed by, they'd walked right up, hands on their guns, and now that he focused on anything but the man before him, he heard the soft thud of boots from behind him of another set fast approaching.

"Life is so fragile," Winter squeezed, fingers biting into the flesh above the collar of Kenshin's noragi. "We both know how much damage a bullet can do."

He might have evaded them. There were only the four of them and Winter, and they were slow, these English. But bullets were not and there was no cover between here and the road, just broad grassy park, and the street beyond was spotted with more soldiers. And Winter had him at a disadvantage. Had from the unfortunate day they'd met managed to maneuver Kenshin into a position of his wanting. The man was correct, in that as long as he held Kaoru and Kenji in his power, Kenshin's choices were limited.

Winter spoke to them in their language and they nodded, giving Kenshin dark looks. Another hand landed on him from behind, gripping his arm, moving down to his wrist as they pulled his hands behind him. He let them, staring levelly at Winter.

"Friends of mine." Winter explained, while they fastened cold metal around his wrists. "The East India Company has great influence in the colonial government and my uncle is a shareholder. They think you're one of my houseboys, absconded with property of mine."

They jerked him around, hauling him between two of them across the park, while Winter strolled leisurely behind, chatting with one of the others. People made way for them, English and Ceylonese alike, staring at the procession curiously.

There was a carriage waiting on the street, a dark, covered affair, with two attendants perched on the back and another that might have been Japanese on the high seat, holding the reins.

Winter caught up, slipping a hand again onto Kenshin's shoulder and leaning over to taunt. "A servant stealing from his master at the very least is cause to lose a hand. Execution is not unwarranted if the issue is pushed."

Kenshin stared at the crest on the door of the carriage, mouth tight, thinking more about those documents in his and Sano's room, and the possibility of Sano being there when Winter sent men to retrieve them. Sano wouldn't let them go peacefully. If Winter sent simple thugs, Sano could hold his own, but if he sent guardsmen with guns - -

Let Saitou be there when they came. Just that much good fortune fate owed him.

"I've convinced them," Winter was going on, very much attracted to the sound of his own voice. "That I prefer to discipline of my servants personally."

Kenshin's mouth twitched in a humorless smile. "Of that, I have no doubt."

Winter pushed him towards the coach and that was okay. If the man thought he held all the power, then he'd be more likely to take Kenshin to where Kaoru and Kenji were. And for that, Kenshin would endure a great deal.

He'd thought maybe, one of the large houses along the row on Galle Street, but the trip was much longer than that. Kenshin sat squeezed between two English soldiers, while Winter and a third sat across, speaking in low tones now and then, words Kenshin could not understand. The shades on the windows were down, casting the interior in shadows, trapping the smoke from the cigar Winter had lit, and the one's he'd offered to the senior of the trio of Soldiers. It was a sweeter stench than the cigarette's Saitou smoked. No less strangling after a while, trapped in the haze of it.

The sounds of the city receded, the sounds the wheels of the carriage made muffled on soft dirt. There were the sounds of countryside, of birds and the rustle of trees close by, the occasional jolting as the carriage hit a rut. Outside the city then. Well outside.

By the time they rolled to a halt, his hands had gone numb, trapped between him and the hard seat back. The light flooding in the carriage when the Japanese servant jumped down and opened the door was momentarily blinding. The soldiers blinked, stretching no doubt stiff limbs, one of them deliberately elbowing Kenshin in the process, a small enough cruelty for putting them out. They pulled him out and he stared at the façade of what seemed a very old building. A grand house of what he thought might be Ceylonese design and not western. A grander yard that spilled down a rolling lawn to lush gardens ripe with tropical blooms. No other buildings within his line of sight. Nothing but forest far to the left, and vast fields of low greenery - - tea - - he thought, to the right of the sprawling estate. He could just see tiny figures out amidst the crops, working the fields.

Winter waved a hand at the house and said in Japanese for Kenshin's benefit. "The house of my uncle. As he's gotten older, he's found the climate and the society of England more beneficial to his health. He leaves me free usage of it."

"Are they here?" He asked and one of the English soldiers cuffed him, a sharp blow against the side of the head for the atrocity of speaking. Winter waved a hand, amused, and spoke a few mollifying words to the guardsman, who glowered, no great proponent, it seemed, of disobedient servants.

"He thinks me too lenient," Winter explained, as he led the way into the house, through doors opened by bowing Ceylonese servants.

The Japanese, a man of perhaps fifty, with short cropped hair and a small, pursed mouth, hurried ahead, through a massive foyer with high stone ceilings carved with intricate art. They followed him, the two guards, hauling Kenshin between them, Winter striding behind, the tap of his shoes echoing on hardwood floors. He only caught flashes of elegant rooms as they passed by, heading for the door the Japanese man had disappeared through. A basement at the bottom of wide stone steps. A large cold space with walls lined by crates and barrels and unused furniture. The servant had lit a few lamps along the wall that chased shadows away. The same servant trotted up, as they held Kenshin in the middle of that space, a thin smile on his small mouth, a set of leg irons in his hands.

Kenshin met his eyes, unflinching, putting promise behind his stare and after a moment, the smile faltered, replaced by a tightening of lips, and the man knelt, fastening the irons around Kenshin's ankles. Hobbled then, with little more than a foot of chain between his feet, and then Winter felt safe enough to have them unclasp one of the cuffs on his wrists so they could force his hands up over his head to dangling loop of chain and refasten the cuffs around it.

The guards laughed among themselves then, duty fulfilled, and Winter spoke with them, clapping on the back in a comradely fashion. The manservant glared darkly at Kenshin while his master escorted the soldiers to the top of the stairs.

"Do you enjoy licking the boots of the English?" Kenshin inquired softly, and the man's eyes narrowed.

The man stepped closer, bolder with no viable threat from Kenshin. "Foolish boy, to cross my master."

"He does look the boy, doesn't he, Jun? " Winter remarked, descending the stairs again alone. "But it's deceiving. This is a manslayer, who fought for the Meiji in the revolution."

The servant, Jun, lifted his brows, reassessing. He looked closer, eyes narrowed, reaching out a finger to graze the cross shaped scars on Kenshin's cheek. Kenshin jerked his head away with a baring of teeth.

"Ahh," Jun breathed in surprise. "So he is. I understand your caution, master Quinton. You should kill him now. No good will come of keeping him alive."

Winter dismissed that suggestion with a wave of his hand. "Not just yet."

He moved around Kenshin, trailing a hand across his back, stepped in close to his back and loosened the noragi's belt. Slid a hand across his bared stomach, up to the shiny pink scar where his bullet had ripped through Kenshin's shoulder. "It's fate you know, that you survived to find your way back to me. I denied myself the leisure to discover the limits of your tolerances personally before and I regretted that. I've no appointments to keep at the moment to keep me from such pleasures now."

"Are they here?" Kenshin repeated the question he'd asked earlier. Teeth clenched this time, skin shivering involuntarily from Winter's hand upon it.

Winter sighed, dragging his fingers through the tail of hair at Kenshin's neck, loosening the band that held it, grasping a handful and raising it to his face in inhale.

"No," he said. "Not anymore. I would imagine they're a good ways out to sea now, on a ship that sailed three days past. The man they're bound for has a taste for Asian women. She'll be well taken care for."

Kenshin shut his eyes. A sound escaped him. A growl that sounded less than human. He slammed his head back, catching Winter full in the face. The man howled, staggering back, clutching at his face, blood spraying from his nose. The servant came at Kenshin with a cry, driving a fist into his gut, another in his side. He hardly felt the pain.

Gone. Gone. So close and he'd missed them. Wasted time chasing this soulless bastard while the distances between them grew. He'd let himself be taken - - again - - and for nothing.

A hand grasped his hair, winding it around a fist, jerking his head back between his arms. Winter glared down at him, nose already swelling, blood flowing freely down his chin, dripping onto his white shirt. "You will pay for that. And if this deal goes sour because of your actions - - you'll beg me for a quick death."

"Master, let me tend to you - -" Jun urged, hovering.

Winter snarled, jerked once - - sharply - - on Kenshin's hair, before releasing him. He shrugged off his manservant's hands and stalked for the stairs. Jun gave Kenshin a killing glare, before extinguishing the lights on the lanterns, and hurrying up the stairs after his master.

When the door banged shut, it plunged the world into utter, inky black. Kenshin hissed, jerking at the chains, but they were fastened securely and all he managed to do was bruise his wrists and tear skin to the point that he felt the warm trickle of blood down his arms. He bowed his head, bereft in that darkness, a wave of frustration washing over him so strongly it made his eyes water. The dead were laughing at him now, he thought. All those dead, finally getting their due of him. Urging karma all this time to deliver him one harsh blow after another.

Sano downed the last of his ale and slammed the mug on the countertop, annoyed. The light outside the tavern door was tinted grey with afternoon showers. Late. Not more than an hour or so to dusk and Kenshin hadn't shown back up. Up to things that he no doubt thought Sano too 'clumsy' to participate in. Not at the fat old lord's house, Sano had already figured that out by loitering around the premises earlier in the day, and seeing nothing to suggest that the master of the place had been accosted in the light of day. Servants and vendors came and went and the fat old bastard himself left himself a few hours after noon, which ended Sano's reason for surveillance.

So, he'd wondered to the docks, where he knew Kenshin had an interest in inquiring of foreign sailors about his elusive Englishman, but no Kenshin there either. Sano ended up sampling a good deal of various alcohol. Native brewed beer, English whiskey, an Indian brew of fermented rice called manri. Sporting a buzz didn't do much to dull his irritation.

Losing most of the money he'd gotten Kenshin to give him from Sano's purse in a game of dice he'd found didn't make it better. He ought to kick Kenshin's ass when he got back, he really ought to, only the mood Kenshin was in these last few days, he probably wouldn't let him get away with it. Kenshin hadn't been much for bed since the house on Galle street, even when Sano complained. Had sat there in the dark with that sword leaning against his shoulder and dozed like he was in the midst of war.

Sano figured he was, warring on the inside as well as the frustrating one he was fighting against a foe that wouldn't show itself. A little sex, Sano had tried to argue, could only make things better, but Kenshin wasn't buying it. And Sano couldn't fault a man for narrowing his focus when his endgame just might be in sight. Well, he couldn't fault him too much. He might have been a little more compassionate about Kenshin's struggle, if he wasn't the one going to end up with the short end of the stick when Kenshin got his family back.

His own damn fault anyway, he supposed. If he'd had any idea, when he'd been nineteen and stupid and stubborn and ready to leave rather than hang around watching Kaoru domesticate Kenshin, that he'd wanted anything more than Kenshin's friendship - - well he might have stuck around and given the twit a little competition. Nineteen hadn't been his smartest year. Hell, a lot of years hadn't been his smartest. And maybe he had known, just hadn't been comfortable enough with himself to admit it.

He lost his way trying to get back to the inn. Too much drink and his sense of direction sometimes got muddled. Wondering around Colombo for an hour as dark was falling, managed to clear his head enough to recognize a landmark and get himself turned in the right direction. He skulked through the gates and followed the path around the back of the inn to the bungalows. There was a light in his and Kenshin's. Kenshin back then, and Sano hoped he'd been worrying as much about Sano being gone all day as Sano had about him.

With every intention of giving Kenshin a piece of his mind, Sano jerked open the door. He got two steps into the room with his mouth open in mid rant, and stopped dead, catching half a look at the faces of two Ceylonese men in the midst of rifling through his stuff before they launched themselves at him, short, curved blades glinting in the shadows.

He staggered back in surprise, holding up an arm to ward off the slice of a blade, and felt the sting of it cutting into his forearm. He ducked under it as the man drew his arm back for another slice, and drove his fist into the guy's sternum. The guy sailed backwards, knocked right off his feet and into the table with the oil lamp. Sano didn't wait to see him hit the ground, busy back peddling to avoid the other one who was trying to stab him in the kidney. Not too hard to avoid. They weren't that adept with their blades. He'd fought better by far.

He caught the second guy's wrist as he was making another jab at him, twisted hard enough to fracture bones and the man howled, trying to jerk away. Sano didn't let him until he planted his other fist into the thieving bastard's face.

The both of them were down and the flame from the oil lamp was flickering damned close to spilled oil. He snatched it upright before it could ignite it. There was the sound of men approaching from outside, the clop of hard soled boots and the voices of Englishmen who never bothered to practice subtlety.

"Sagara!"

Sano whirled, fists clenched, and glared at Saitou in his doorway. Saitou jerked his head towards the inn proper and snapped. "Come. Now!"

Normally, Sano would have balked at following any order Saitou gave, but at the moment, the hairs on the back of his neck were bristling and staying here seemed a damned bad notion with the sound of English soldiers pounding down the walk. He lunged for the rolled parchments Kenshin had stolen, tucked behind their rolled bedding, then grabbed Kenshin's sword, and bolted for the door. Saitou had already disappeared into the darkness towards the back of the inn yard. Sano ran that way, towards the wall at the back. He made a leap for it, caught the top and hauled himself over. Saitou was already there, a pale face in the shadows that jerked his head and ran, keeping close to the darkest of the dark places, down the alley behind the inn.

After a good distance, when the only sounds were the normal, calm ones of a town at night, Saitou spun on him, slamming him back into the wall of a building, fists clenched at the collar of Sano's jacket.

"What have the two of you done?"

Sano shoved him away, indignant. "Get your hands off, bastard."

Saitou hit him. A blow against the side of the head that Sano didn't even come close to see coming. He braced himself against the wall to keep his knees from buckling and cursed while the spots receded.

"Where's Himura?"

"Fuck you, Saitou."

"No. We're _all_ fucked, Sagara, if he's done something to set the whole of the English occupation of this island on our heels. They fear rebellion, and if they scent the seeds of it, whether real or imaginary, they'll raze everything in their path to destroy it. Now what have the two of you done?"

"Your damned job," Sano muttered and waved the hand with the rolled documents.

Saitou narrowed already narrow eyes and snatched the roll out of Sano's hand.

"Got it from some English lord - - Kilbourne or something - - it's the whole shifty trade agreement. He's using it as leverage to get to Winter."

Saitou closed his eyes, drawing a hissing breath through his teeth.

"Fools," he breathed, finally. "A pair of fools. Him more than you because he has the intelligence to know better."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

Saitou just shook his head and started walking.

Sano pushed himself off the wall and stalked after. "What the fuck, Saitou?"

"You don't think they'll betray one another, even in their duplicity, to the benefit of a lowly foreigner, do you? To them we're all savages."

"I think they're a bunch of greedy bastards who don't know a damned thing about honor."

"Where's Himura?"

"I don't know," Sano barked, disgusted. "I haven't seen him since this morning."

Saitou stopped, glancing back at him narrowly. "And it didn't occur to you that this brilliant plan of yours might have backfired?"

"Yes, it fucking occurred to me. I've looked all over - - I - -" he stopped, clutching the sheath of Kenshin's sword. "Backfired how?"

Saitou didn't answer. Just started walking again a brisk stride that even Sano with his long legs had to jog to keep up with. "Where are you going?"

"Tell me exactly what happened with this lord Kilbourne?"


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Twenty-three

Kenshin had broken Winter's nose and it hurt like hell. Jun mixed one of his herbal concoctions to ease the pain, but nothing worked as well as hard liquor. Winter had several snifters of fine Irish whiskey, sitting with strips of rag up his nostrils, waiting for the bleeding to finally stop.

He'd had a fine, straight nose, reminiscent of his aristocratic lineage, and the little bastard had ruined it. He'd be lucky if it healed with only a slight bump. Damned slant-eyed fuck for consistently complicating Winter's life. Any reasonable man would have given up at the shores of his own country instead of trekking across the sea and following him here. Damned Japanese obstinacy. Which was why, of course, Winter had concocted this whole plan to begin with, trying to figure out a way to etch out a foothold of lucrative Japanese trade before the damned Americans managed to convince the Meiji government to grant them open trade rights. Then it would be anyone's game. For the time being the Japanese government was still gun shy of unfettered foreign access to all their ports of call. And he'd been so damned close to getting that access to Tokyo and its untapped exotic goods.

Damned little chance of that now, without Erizowa's help. But still, there were ways Winter still might come out ahead in this. He'd halfway convinced Kilbourne that Kenshin's claims were all lies. That Kenshin was an agent of a rival Japanese clan that wished to circumvent their lucrative deal by scaring off Winter's investors, in favor of their own with other foreign rival shippers.

Kilbourne had already sunk enough money into this project that he wanted to believe in plots and machinations afoot rather than the simple fact that they'd been sunk. With a little finesse, he could figure a way out of this that avoided placing blame at his doorstep. Avoided the displeasure of the all-powerful East India company, who did not look kindly upon competition from within and most importantly no black marketeering charges leveled against him by his own government.

The pain was duller, Jun's powder having accomplished its task. Winter gingerly fingered the swelling and winced, then glared at the floor, in the direction of the basement where his guest still languished. A few hours left chained down there and Winter figured Kenshin might welcome a little company. He smirked, and it brought a sting of discomfort, so he turned it into a scowl and contemplated the best method of indoctrinating a dangerous new acquisition. He'd really rather that his nose was the only injury he received during his entertainment.

He called for his manservant and Jun appeared post haste, bowing his head and waiting for Winter's command with those inscrutable black eyes of his. That was one of the things he liked about Kenshin, the color of his eyes, and the emotion they broadcast. At least when he wasn't killing mad. Then there was nothing in his gaze but promises of pain and death.

"Whip up something, would you, to make our guest a bit less inclined to perpetrate violence. I think it's time to play a little."

"He's dangerous, master Quinton," Jun complained. "Kill him now or he'll bring bad luck upon us."

"Which is why I'd like you to administer one of your ingenious powders. Now don't question my orders." Winter gave him a stern look and the manservant pursed his lips and inclined his head once more.

"Shall I have him brought up to the room, or have your kit taken down to the basement?"

Winter shrugged, considering. Jun turned his head, as if his hearing were somehow keener than Winter's own, or he had some sort of unnatural prescience, which just might be the case for he tended to anticipate Winter's needs often before Winter himself. Then the chimes rang, indicating someone at the door.

"Well," Winter straightened his jacket, running hand through his hair. "I wasn't aware we were expecting visitors."

Jun hurried out of the study, his hand surreptitiously on the little knife he always carried. Winter strode after him, keenly aware of the weight of the pistol in his inner pocket. One of the Ceylonese servants opened the door, bowing deeply at whoever was on the other side.

Winter didn't have long to wait to see who it was, for Kilbourne shouldered his considerable bulk past the slim Ceylonese girl and stormed Winter's foyer. He wasn't alone. Ashton and DeMarley were on his heels. All of Winter's investors in his little scheme come to demand their due. Damn Kilbourne to hell for not taking Winter at his word.

"Gentlemen. To what do I owe the honor?"

"You know damned well, Winter." Kilbourne spat, cheeks ruddy, jowls quivering. Winter imagined putting a bullet between the fat bastard's eyes.

Lord Ashton, anything but fat and lazy, strolled past Kilbourne, eyes half lidded and sharp. He lifted a brow when he got a good look at winter's swollen nose and purpling eyes. "Have a bit of an accident?"

Winter smiled tightly. "Just a little mishap."

"Looks painful, ol' Chap."

"I understand we've had a problem, Winter." DeMarly got straight to the point.

"Nothing I can't deal with, my lord. Have dealt with, in fact."

"So you nabbed the insolent bastard, then?" Kilbourne demanded.

Winter inclined his head, smiling his merchant's smile. All promise and none of it reaching past his eyes. He waved a hand, ushering them down the hall to the billiards room with its broad gaming table and its leather furniture, its suits of armor and its stuffed animal heads leering down from the walls. The room smelled faintly of smoke and fine liquor. A pleasant scent. A manly scent.

"So what's this I hear, Winter, of fake daughters, and double dealings?" DeMarly asked, soft spoken, the calmest of the lot, a plain looking man with a fortune at his back. A man with a stake in the East India Company, but not as big a stake as he'd like.

"Was the little Japanese girl you presented Erizowa's daughter or not?"

"Of course she was. She's well on her way home to report the success of her mission to her papa as we speak."

"And the claims otherwise?" Kilbourne demanded.

"Lies," Winter said. "I told you they were lies. You think the house of lords is chock full of political machinations - -we don't hold a candle to the internal politics of these Japanese noble houses. Erizowa is still our ally. The man that broke into your house was an agent of a rival house."

"This agent - - you have him here?" Ashton inquired, helping himself to a tumbler of brandy.

Winter hesitated a moment, wary. Then nodded. "He is - -my guest."

Ashton chuckled.

Kilbourne's face turned ruddier. "Why haven't you strung the bastard up?"

Winter shrugged. "I had questions for him."

"And did he give you answers?" DeMarly asked.

Winter smiled. "They're very stubborn, these Japanese. I haven't finished asking."

"Why don't we ask him a few questions of our own?" Ashton suggested, damn the man. "Let us assuage some of our own fears."

"A reasonable request," DeMarly agreed.

Kilbourne just chomped, agitated, on the stub of a fat cigar clenched between his teeth.

"Ah, well, I was rather - - vigorous in my questioning. He might not be much good for answering yours. And even if he did, he's adamant in his lies."

"Let's see him, Winter," Kilbourne finally snapped. "I've a debt to pay the insolent dog."

Winter shrugged, smiling his false smile again to hide his annoyance. "As you wish, gentlemen."

He slipped out to the hall, where Jun was waiting, dipped his head and ordered softly. "Make sure he's not coherent enough to talk, then have him brought up."

Jun nodded and scurried away to do his bidding.

He offered them fresh cigars and a sampling of his uncle's finest Scottish double malt while they waited. He trusted Jun to accomplish his task and if Kenshin were lucid enough to get out a few words - - well, the only translators in the room where himself and his manservant. But he had to play his cards carefully, these were dangerous men with power and position, used to getting their own way. They'd ruin him if they guessed he was double dealing them.

Soon enough Jun appeared at the doorway, bowing at the lot of them, before moving aside and letting two of the native servants haul Kenshin in between them. Jun hadn't unfettered him, even though his head drooped and his body was barely responsive to the handling.

"What the hell is this?" Kilbourne rose, stalking over, glaring at Winter more than their prisoner. "This can't be the one - - the man who attacked me was larger, I'm sure of it."

Winter smiled, letting just a touch of condescension flitter at the edges. "Men tend to seem larger when they've got a sword to your throat, Kilbourne. I assure you, this is the man."

The man cast him a nasty look, then grasped a handful of Kenshin's hair, jerking his head back. Kenshin's lashes fluttered, trying to focus, eyes distant and hazy. Jun deserved a bonus for the effectiveness of his powders, Winter thought with satisfaction. Ashton strolled up, lazily sucking on his cigar, eyes flitting over Kenshin's face.

"Hmm. Doesn't look that threatening, Kilbourne. Look's rather too pretty for that. But then, looks can be deceiving. Perhaps you were drunk, ol' chap."

Kilbourne snarled, swung his meaty hand and backhanded Kenshin. The two servants clutched tighter to his arms, holding him upright.

"Were you the one?" Kilbourne demanded, grasping his jaw, forcing his head back up. "Do you know who I am? Do you, you worthless dog?"

He hit him again, with little more reaction. Ashton shook his head looking bored.

"I told you," Winter said sipping at his own drink. "That he wouldn't be much for answering questions."

He waved a hand towards the billiard's table and the two servants deposited their burden there. Kenshin lay, feet dangling, manacled hands limp across his stomach on the green felt of the tabletop. Winter leaned a palm on the edge looking down, mouth twitching as he saw the struggle for coherency in Kenshin's eyes. There was a little trickle of blood running down from the corner of his mouth.

"So," DeMarly leaned a hip against the table, casting a glance down at Kenshin, before dismissing him and looking to Winter. "This rival clan? Can you handle the problem on the Japanese end?"

"I can. My contact's clan, you might say, is more powerful than his rivals. Erizowa is a powerful enough player that he will deal with them. Trust me, gentlemen."

"When I see a return on my investment, I'll trust you a little more," Ashton said, then lifted a brow at Kilbourne who'd hefted a billiard's cue and was slapping the thick end against his palm. He cracked it down onto the table top next to Kenshin's head.

Winter flinched at the retort, frowning at the little tear in the felt. "This is a perfectly fine table, Kilbourne. I'd prefer if you didn't get blood all over it."

"Then drag him onto the floor. I'll take the beginnings of my own investment's return out of his hide."

"How plebian of you," Ashton drawled, before Winter could think up an excuse to deny the man the chance of taking away his own well earned enjoyment.

"He didn't break into your home, Ashton, and put a sword to your throat."

"And embarrass me in front of a little brown bed warmer?" Ashton guessed, and Kilbourne bristled.

"Beating him to death would be so boring," Ashton remarked, his smile slow and lazy, but Winter thought him anything but. "Why not vent your frustration, Kilbourne in a more sporting fashion?"

Kilbourne canted him a narrow look. Winter did, waiting.

"We haven't had a hunt in ages. Do your uncle's hounds still know how to pursue two legged game, Winter?"

Winter's mouth slowly curved in a smile. Ashton always had been a man after his own heart. A kindred spirit. "Aye. They'll chase down any prey they get the scent of."

"Then what say you, gentlemen?" Ashton smiled. "The man that takes the prey wins the right to dispose of it any manner he sees fit."

"He won't be much sport for a while." Winter looked down at Kenshin. At the half lashed gaze and the slowly flexing fingers of a man trying hard to fight his way out of the narcotic induced haze he'd been plunged into.

"We'll have a few drinks, enjoy a round of cards or two and let him recover some of his wits before we loose the dogs."

The last thing he remembered, and even that memory was hazy and insubstantial, was Winter's man, Jun slipping down the stairs to the basement they'd imprisoned him, and blowing a handful of white powder into his face. Things had gone very, very shadowy then, and slow, thick like sap oozing with infinite slowness down the trunk of a tree. He didn't recall a great deal of what happened after. Just an indefinite passage of time, a lurid wash of color and jabbering foreign voices that came and went as his vision did. Hands on him, that he ought to try and shake off, but lacked the wherewithal to do so.

After a while, water hit his face, cold and wet, shocking him into awareness. A sharper blow followed, a hard, open palmed slap across the face. He sputtered, trying to focus as hands tangled in his collar, dragging him up, slapping him again, both cheeks, voice hissing at him in a low angry tones to wake up.

Kenshin blinked water from his eyes, staring through a tangle of wet hair at a half familiar, pinched face. Jun. Winter's servant, who crouched in front of him, while men he couldn't see grasped him from behind, hands in his hair, hands on his collar holding him back against their knees while Jun shook a fist in his face.

"Filthy assassin," Jun spat at him, grabbing Kenshin's jaw, forcing his head back and bringing a short knife up to press against his throat. "My master is a fool, to have let you live this long."

There was nothing to do but stare down into angry black eyes and wait to see if the man were of a mind to slit his throat. But eventually, Jun jerked the blade away, instead slashing at the shoulder of Kenshin's noragi, Ripping down the sleeve and tearing off a good portion of the cloth. He flung the rag at a servant and snapped something at the man in Ceylonese, and the man scurried off.

Jun rose, jerked his head and the two men behind him pulled him up. It was an effort to get his legs under him. His sandals were gone and the wood was cool and slick under his feet, but at least they'd done away with the leg irons. If he could just chase away the haze that still clung with tenacity in his head, he might be able to help himself out of this situation. But wanting was a far cry from doing and the hall passed in a blur as they hauled him to a set of tall, glass paned doors and a wide porch looking out over a night dark yard. It had been a few hours after noon when he'd come here, he thought, so a good deal of time had passed.

Sano. Winter had promised to send men after the stolen papers and Sano might have been there. Either to stop them or be stopped by them. His mind whirled around scenarios where blood was shed. He could see it clear as day. Could scent it - - a scent you never forgot once you'd been awash in it - -

Jun slapped him again, and he hadn't even realized the man had moved to face him, mind that unfocused, thoughts that chaotic. Not a state of mind conducive to survival. Too much of the drug still in his system, then. Still, if the man hit him again, Kenshin was going to have to take offense and return the favor in some manner.

Jun stabbed a finger towards the darkened yard and the vast, black fields of tea beyond it. "Run. You run or the dogs will tear you apart, understand, assassin?"

Jun shoved him off the porch, and he staggered, lacking any semblance of grace, down the steps, going to hands and one knee in wet grass. He looked up from under his hair at Jun and his pair of burly servants backing him, then heard the baying of dogs. Jun's mouth curved into a cruel smile and Kenshin hissed, shoving to his feet.

When he swung his head too rapidly, his vision wavered, the shadows shuddering, the lights from the house flickering as if he were looking at them through a multi-faceted stone. The forest offered cover that the fields Jun had pointed towards did not, and the closest wood line was beyond the gardens. He ran that way, nothing so neat as a straight line, shaking his head in an effort to force clarity that did not want to come. But balance was no less intricate a part of him, as breathing and his feet found the way, body doing what it ought even if his mind swam with disorientation. Past the hedges of the garden, and the lush beds of flowering plants, the archways with their coiling vines and towards the dark wall of forest.

Light flared at him, a sudden roaring, demon faced apparition with flames at the ends of its arms. Another, leaping to join the first, bellowing at him, waving the fire in his face, and he veered from his path, shocked into taking a different course towards the fields. It occurred to him, as his heart dislodged from his throat that they'd been men. Men in masks waving torches to herd him in a direction of their choosing.

He heard the dogs again, a cacophony of excited barking from the darkness beyond the mansion and drawing closer. He didn't turn to look, just plunged into the thigh high tea plants at the edge of the fields. There was forest to the right of him, bordering the fields. A great deal of forest that they couldn't block the whole of. Even if they tried, they wouldn't deter him this time.

The sharp retort of gunfire rang out, and he reflexively crouched, diving into the shelter of plants. The bullet hadn't come near him, though. Either a bad shot, or they were simply reveling in their power. He paused for a moment, eyes shut, listening past the thud of his own heart to the sound of dogs - - and horses. The dogs had entered the fields, he could hear the sound of them ripping through tender plants on their path towards him. He rose and sprinted towards the tree line.

Two hundred yards and he rushed it headlong, feeling the presence of the pack behind him - - their roiling excitement, their lust for the kill. He broke the edge of the forest, plunged into darkness not pierced by moonlight and ran. Mulch soft and wet under his feet from recent rains, branches snapping his face and arms as he tore through underbrush. He was fast, he knew he was fast, even hindered as he was, but the dogs had four legs instead of two - - had animal instinct that a man who'd let his own instincts dull over the past few years, could not compete with.

Teeth ripped at the trailing edge of his torn noragi, yanking him off his balance. He staggered to the side, caught himself from falling outright and swung his manacled hands, hard, against a canine head. The hound let out a yelp of pain, knocked away from him and into the bole of a young tree. Another leapt at him and he rolled under its lunge, fingers curling around a fallen branch and bringing it up in a backhanded swing that cracked much like the sound of a bullet, against the dog's thick neck. The branch broke, the dog dropped, lifeless and Kenshin ran.

The ground gave way unexpectedly under his feet and he slid down a muddy slope, scrambling helplessly for purchase with hands bound and plunged into cold, dark water. He came up, gasping, waist deep in a stream that might have been fifteen feet wide. He might have gained himself a few precious moments while the dogs sniffed about their fallen pack members. A chance to get them off his track. He ripped the torn noragi off, flung the sodden cloth up the opposite slope, then headed down stream in the darkness. A treacherous path with slick rocks under his feet and unexpected deep pools to make him flounder. Something sinuous and black glinted in a bit of dappled moonlight on the waters surface, gliding towards him and he hissed, batting it out of the water towards the far shore. A very, very bad thing, snakes in the water. He'd rather face the dogs.

He waded towards the opposite shore, pulling himself up onto the bank, scrambling up the slope and into the trees. He could hear the dogs, but they weren't closing in. Mulling in confusion around his coat, trying to find a scent to follow. They'd figure it out. But for the moment he let himself slump against a tree, drawing in gasping lungfuls of air. Trying to wrap his mind around what exactly it was he was running from.

There were men behind the dogs. Men with guns. Winter's men, he could only assume. But Jun was Winter's man and Jun had set him free. Well, as free as a man might be, manacled and herded into being a rabbit for a pack of dogs. Some game of Winter's then, and he knew by now that Winter liked to play. Liked to manipulate and tease and torment.

Kenshin bared his teeth in frustration, pushed himself off the tree and started moving again. The whole of this place was unfamiliar. He had no notion where he was headed. For all he knew, he might be circling back around to the mansion.

The baying of the dogs grew closer. He heard the distant shout of a man. He ran. Men, he could avoid in the darkness. Dogs were another matter. And the dogs were on his trail again.

He found a stout enough stick as he moved, snapping it, with a foot against the bole and a grunt of effort, off a downed tree. He gripped it two handed, spun even as he caught the glimpse of a fast moving dark shape through the trees rushing at him. Cracked the dog in the muzzle and kept turning, leaping over the one on its heels and bringing the limb down upon the third. Caught another in the side, knocking it against a tree, then got pulled off his balance by teeth in the leg of his trousers. His foot slid on wet mulch and that leg went down under him, an unfortunate lapse that let another one get past his guard and latch hold of his forearm, bearing him backwards under the dog's not insubstantial weight. He went with it, using the dog's own momentum to spin it off him, bringing up a knee and slamming it against the stubbornly clenched jaws around his arm.

He had half a glimpse in the frenzy of the attacking pack of a larger, black shape bearing down on him. He half turned, the dog still attached to his arm, and met the sole of a boot, slamming into the side of his head. He went down, head spinning, the dogs descending upon him, snarling, nipping at him, shifting to avoid the prancing hooves of a horse as the animal sidled into the fray.

There was the barking command of a man, sharp orders that made no sense to Kenshin's reeling mind. He brought his arms up, covering his head as hooves thudded into the soft earth next to him. Trying to protect his throat from the snapping jaws of the dogs that wanted to rip it out. There was the cracking sound of a whip, the yelp of dogs as they were driven off. Then a lash of pain as it struck his ankle, the tail of it slithering around and cinching tight before he was jerked across the ground, in the horse's wake, the hounds dancing gleefully as he was dragged. A nightmarish progression, across bramble and earthy debris, his back slamming against a protruding root here, his head bouncing off another there.

Not far - - it could not have been far - - and then the tension around his ankle relaxed, the end of the whip slipping off, trailing in the mulch as the horse paced. Kenshin lay there, spots of color dancing at the edges of dimmed vision. The pain of maybe a rib only newly healed, fractured again, vying with the burn of the scrapes on his back.

More horses joined the first, towering over him, indistinguishable silhouettes in the darkness. The dogs circled, whining, the fervor of the hunt dissipated, looking for confirmation of their success from their masters. One even went so far as to thrust its long wet tongue against his face. Men spoke among themselves, laughing, pleased with their accomplishment of taking down disadvantaged prey. No honor at all among the lot of them.

Winter leaned over him, pale hair, pale eyes in the slivers of moonlight that escaped the foliage, trapping Kenshin's manacled hands beneath his weight . He had the whip coiled in his hand and trailed the end of it across Kenshin's scarred cheek. He said something to the men accompanying him. They were dark shapes, looming atop their horses, looking down upon them.

"I win," Winter said, grinning at him, teeth eerily pale in the shadows of his face.

Kenshin had neither the breath, nor the inclination to engage him in conversation, but then Winter didn't seem to expect it. He looped the supple leather of the whip around Kenshin's neck, pulled it taut enough to choke off air and bent down close.

"I told you," he said, lips grazing Kenshin's temple, whispering softly as if he were speaking to a lover as he choked him. "I told you I'd make you pay."

Of course Kilbourne complained that they didn't string him up and kill him there - - gut him like any other prey they'd hunted down. It had been, on occasion, done before, when the wealthiest of Winter's blooded family acquaintances had been bored and had a taste for the blood of prey of a higher caliber. Any proper English aristocrat saw these people in the lands that they'd colonized, as little more than savages, anyway. Two legged beasts to toil in their fields, make their exported goods, clean their houses and occasionally warm their beds - - to use as they saw fit, which was the god given right of a conquering, civilized people.

Kilbourne believed that to his bones, having no more respect for the native peoples than he did for his dogs. Winter was more of an equal opportunity manipulator. He'd use an Englishman if it worked to his advantage, as easily as he'd use a foreigner. He'd used Kenshin - - but he respected him. Hard not to respect a man with Kenshin's tenacity. It didn't mean Winter wouldn't kill him - - but he'd no intention of letting Kilbourne name the place or the method. It was a personal thing now, that he had every intention of taking his sweet time with.

He put a rope around Kenshin's neck while he was still reeling from being half asphyxiated, and almost choked him out again until he managed to gain his feet, grasping the rope as it jerked taut when Winter's horse began moving through the wood. The dogs danced around him, tangling with his legs, but he managed with admirable grace to avoid tripping over them and being dragged. That little indignation would have pleased Winter. Kenshin deserved nothing less for killing two of his dogs.

A long trek back to the house. Arduous for a man bleeding from no few places and lacking shoes, tethered behind a long legged hunter whose walk equaled most horse's trot. The servants were out in mass when they rode up, whipped into competency by Jun, who glared with murder in his eyes at a live Kenshin. Jun had no love for the tools of the Meiji restoration, a born and bred servant of the shoganate they had replaced. His own master had died at the hands of an assassin, and though it was doubtful that that hand had been Himura the Battousai, he'd made a name for himself during the revolution. Still one never knew. Jun had reason enough for grudges. Perhaps he'd allow Jun a few hours to inquire. A faithful servant deserved occasional incentives.

Men rushed forward to take charge of dogs and horses. Winter dismounted, winding the rope around his fist, while Kenshin leaned over his knees, panting, sweat darkened auburn hair clinging to shoulders and shielding his face. He jerked a head at Jun who barked orders and other servants ran to take charge of him. He didn't protest, just stood there between them, lifting his head just enough to meet Winter's eyes through the tangled fall of his hair. Not a welcoming look. A frightening one, truth be told and Winter swallowed, an involuntarily chill traveling down his spine, before he got a hold of himself and snapped the rope tether, a reminder of who was in the position of power here and who was not.

"You'd think the dogs would have ripped the insolence out of him," Ashton remarked, at Winter's back, having noted that look.

"You'd think," Winter grunted, annoyed.

There was blood running down Kenshin's left arm from the imprint of canine jaws. A shallower bite on his shoulder. His feet were bloody from more than pelting through the woods barefoot. A trail of red ran down one ankle, from a hidden wound on his leg. Winter supposed they'd blooded him well enough for the lives he'd taken of theirs.

"I can rid him of it," Kilbourne grunted slapping his crop against his pants leg. As red as the big man's face was, you'd think he'd run back as well, rather than ride.

"Let up, old chap. You lost the right when you lost the hunt." Ashton reminded him.

Kilbourne snarled. "You and your damned 'entertainments', Ashton. I'm owed justice."

Ashton sniffed, and glanced at Winter. "You might as well. You'll not hear the end of it, until he's had his due."

Winter cocked a brow at the crop in Kilbourne's hand, then shrugged, waving a hand. "If it will sooth your injured pride."

They dragged Kenshin into the stable, wild-eyed Ceylonese men who looked as if they'd rather be any place but this, about this business. Jun yelled at them when they looked to hesitate, shoving Kenshin face first against the post at the end of a row of stalls and drawing a rope through the manacles on his wrists and drawing his arms up. He didn't flinch through it. Just stood there, back already scraped, forehead pressed against the wood whiles the wolves circled. All of them, even DeMarly who rarely evidenced emotion, watching with gleaming eyes, anticipating the deconstruction of a man.

"It would make more of an impression if you lent me your whip," Kilbourne remarked.

"No," Winter said flatly. "When and if I choose to mangle him, it will be my hand that does it."

Kilbourne sniffed, shifted his thick fingers on the handle of his crop, then stepped forward and cracked it across Kenshin's shoulders. There was involuntary movement then. The twitching of shocked muscle.

Then Kilbourne laid in, using the shaft as much as the leather. Kenshin didn't make a sound more satisfying than the occasional stifled gasp when he took a hit across the darkening bruise over the ribs on his left side. Kilbourne sounded more distressed, exerting himself beyond his endurance. Winter wasn't surprised. It hadn't been until the bandits had driven the spike through his second hand that he'd screamed in the mountains outside Tokyo.

All Kilbourne was doing was making himself more and more irate at the lack of response. With a curse the man flung the crop away and drove a fist into Kenshin's side. Again and this time Kenshin grunted, a pain sound, fists clenching.

Winter let Kilbourne get in another few hits, before he moved it, driving the man back with a shoulder between him and his victim. "All right. All right. You've had your fun. Go inside, have a brandy - - I've a servant or two that might be your type, eh, Kilbourne. Go on, you've proved your point."

"He never made a sound. Never made a damned sound," Kilbourne panted. "What sort of man endures a beating and doesn't utter a damned sound?"

Ashton threw an arm across the man's burly shoulders and got him walking. "A stubborn one, old Chap."

DeMarly followed them towards the house. Jun stood in the shadows looking disapprovingly at Winter. Winter jerked a hand towards the house. "Don't give me grief, Jun. Have them bring him."

"You'll regret it, Master Quinton. It's not stubborn - - it's discipline. He'll wait for his chance and he'll take it and we'll all pay."

They'd overstayed their welcome, Winter thought. Drinking his liquor, smoking his cigars, enjoying his servants, and inflicting little cruelties on his property. But then, it was a long ride back to the Colombo from the plantation and a good host would have insisted they stay the night. He wasn't feeling the good host.

He was feeling stifled and impatient to be about what he'd been aching to be about since before they'd arrived. He glanced down to Kenshin, curled on his side on the floor near Winter's chair. He might or might not have been conscious. They'd recuffed his hands behind him, looped a rope around his knees, a rope around his ankles. Jun was taking no chances. The blood had crusted on most of the wounds, only the deepest of the puncture marks still seeping red. His back was a mish mash of welts and bruises. There was a bruise on his temple, where Winter had kicked him when the hounds had taken him down finally. His hair mostly concealed it. It didn't detract from his profile. Still too damned pretty to have suffered what he'd suffered tonight. Winter looked like hell and he'd only taken the one hit.

Winter took a swig from the bottle of whiskey he'd taken to drinking from, quicker than bothering to pour it into a glass. He sat it on the table next to him, and reached down, winding a hand in long auburn hair and using it to pull Kenshin up. He dragged him up between his knees, back against the leather armchair, hand still tight in his hair.

"Are you awake?" he asked softly, trailing the thumb of his other hand down the curve of Kenshin's neck.

Kenshin said nothing, though he felt the tensing of muscle as Kenshin tried to relieve the pressure on his shoulders. "They'll be gone soon enough, I promise. I do so look forward to spending time with you alone."

Still nothing. Winter could understand Kilbourne's frustration.

"Shall I tell you about the man I sold your wife, too?" he offered. "I've heard that he particularly appreciates a woman versed in oral sex. Does she have talent in that area?"

There was reaction then. Stiffening of shoulders, a slight frustrated jerk as Kenshin tried to free his hair from Winter's grasp.

"Do you?" Winter asked, pulling Kenshin's head back, grinning down into half lidded, furious eyes. He ran fingers across Kenshin's lips and barely avoided teeth when Kenshin snapped at him. Damned pissed now. It made Winter happy.

He reached for the bottle, shifted the hand in his hair to grasp his jaw and forced the lip of it into his mouth. Kenshin gagged, swallowing convulsively, amber liquor spilling down the corners of his mouth. He turned his head against Winter's knee and coughed when he let him breath. That made him happy, too.

He spent a good deal of time, while DeMarly drowsed on the leather couch, and Kilbourne disappeared with two of his servant girls, forcing liquor on Kenshin. Remembering very well from his days at the dojo, on those occasions that Kaoru had served sake, that Kenshin had only ever partaken sparingly. Either he had little tolerance for it, or had never developed a taste. Either way, Winter enjoyed sliding the neck of the bottle between his lips. Enjoyed it enough that he was hard through his pants, and Kenshin if he were aware enough, had to have felt it against the back of his neck when Winter pressed him close. But maybe not. He'd stopped fighting it a while ago, and his lashes were fluttering, black against his cheeks.

"Looks like he's done for." Ashton strolled over, from where he'd been watching them all like voyeur for most of the night. He crouched down in front of Kenshin, reaching out and brushing a long strand of whisky soaked hair from his cheek. " I've always rather fancied the Indians over the Orientals, but he's really quite something."

Winter lifted a brow. Ashton looked up, meeting his gaze with a sly smile. "DeMarly's dead to the world and Kilbourne's rutting with your little servant girls. They won't notice at all, if you and I take him somewhere a little more private."

Ashton wasn't bad looking. Younger than him. A man he might not mind sharing intimate entertainments with. And it never hurt to have embarrassing information to hold over the head of a peer of realm, if the need ever arose.

Winter smiled. "I have a place."

And he did. A special room, with cabinets full of instruments that he enjoyed employing. With a sturdy bed that sported the sort of restraints a man might need when his guests were less than willing to engage in the games he liked to play.

Kenshin was limp when they drew him up. Drink, the remnant of the drugs, the abuse or a combination of all having finally mastered him. Winter hefted him up and he was heavier than he looked, all lean, compact sinew and muscle. Lolling head, strands of hair clinging to his skin. Thankfully, he didn't need to climb the stairs with him. The room was on the first floor, a guest room separated from the other rooms, providing a certain degree of privacy. Not that Winter's servants would complain. Not if they knew what was good for them.

Ashton opened the door Winter indicated and Winter maneuvered his burden in, depositing him upon the bed. Kenshin was less than immaculate, bloody, dirty. He'd soil the sheets.

"Jun," Winter snapped, knowing very well his manservant would be hovering. "Fetch water and rags to clean him up."

He caught a glimpse of Jun's glower before the little man disappeared to do his bidding. Ashton grinned at him, closed door at his back and Winter felt a sudden swell of camaraderie. A sudden shiver of excitement. He'd never had anyone - - an equal - - to share his predilections with. An audience that could appreciate and savor the same things he enjoyed. This might very well lead to things other than leverage over an influential nobleman.

Ashton lifted a thick leather manacle attached by a short length of chain to one of the hard wood columns at the foot of the bed. "Very nice."

Winter took out a knife from his boot and sliced the rope around Kenshin's legs, already planning out his strategy. Face down, to start. As painfully aroused as he still was, face down would be the most convenient position to begin. The key to the cuffs was in his trouser pocket. He dug it out and unlocked the cuff on Kenshin's closest wrist in preparation of drawing it up towards the leather restraints on the headboard.

He looked up, half second to catch Ashton's eye and Kenshin exploded under his hand. His fingers were gripping flesh one moment and the next grasping at empty air. All he saw was the afterimage of the hand, dangling cuff still attached, that slammed into the side of his face. Felt the metal slice into his skin, and the pain when his nose was broken, was nothing compared to the sickening crack of his cheekbone shattering.

It didn't last long. He heard the dwindling sound of men screaming and then he heard nothing at all.

Chapter Twenty-four

Kenshin and pain were old comrades. Some of his earliest memories were of pain; the sting of the slaver's lash when he'd been too young and too small to do anything but cower under it. Seijuro's infliction of it - - Seijuro having odd ideas in the raising of a child - - in his efforts to make him strong enough, worthy enough to receive Seijuro's legacy. Too many years of fighting a war that had seemed noble at the time, with too few moments of respite. Fighting until his bones ached with the vibration of steel against steel.

Kenshin and pain were quite, quite familiar. Years of harsh acquaintance allowed him to push it to the back of his mind, even when his body screamed bloody murder. Desperation gave him strength that otherwise might have failed him when the sliver of a chance presented itself.

There was a trail of blood, an arc in the air, his vision so focused that he saw the individual droplets as they fell, when Winter spun backwards from his blow. Winter went down, off the side of the bed, but the other man was rushing towards him, calling out in alarm, pulling a small pistol out of his jacket pocket. Kenshin threw himself off the side of the bed, scrambling over Winter's sprawled body, even as Jun was rushing through a second, smaller doorway, screaming himself, a knife in hand.

The man was fast and Kenshin was feeling distinctly slow, but he caught the wrist as the knife hand descended, twisting it away from him, dragging Jun behind him, and slamming an elbow back into the man's face. He had the knife in hand even as Jun's lax fingers loosened on it, and flung it towards the other westerner as the man was squeezing the trigger of the gun. Kenshin threw himself to one side before the retort sounded. Two thunks of impact with flesh. One from Jun behind him who'd taken the bullet meant for him and the other from the knife he'd flung embedding itself in the Englishman's left eye.

Both bodies crumpled simultaneously.

Kenshin crouched there, the fingers of one hand pressed to the floor, his breath harsh and painful. He stared in dismay at the one sprawled against the door, blood seeping out from around the hilt of the knife in his eye socket. Thoroughly dead by his hand and he hadn't meant that. Hadn't been thinking much at all, simply reacting, and a vow he'd kept vigilantly for years had shattered.

Winter was sprawled on the floor at the side of the bed, not so far from his glassy eyed manservant, maybe dead too, for all the blood coating the side of his face. And if that were so - - well, he could not work up regret for it - - not at the moment when he was still reeling from his time under the man's care. Not when the words the man had said about Kaoru, to wound him, still bled raw inside his head.

There were the sounds of pounding feet approaching from the hall. Cries of men alerted by the gunshot. The other Englishmen and their servants. They'd have more guns and more men than he felt capable of dealing with at the moment, when he barely felt capable of keeping his feet.

The only route of escape was the window and he flung himself at it, crashed through, with a splintering of glass and wood. He hit the ground rolling, ground his teeth against the stab of pain in his side, but didn't let it stop his momentum.

The sky was stained with dawn, the trees grey in the distance. There was the drive and the road beyond that, so much clearer this time when his mind wasn't muddled with narcotics. The alcohol, he could function under the influence of. In fact when his blood was rushing, adrenalin high, it almost made things unnaturally clear.

A shot rang out, spiting up grass and dirt near his feet. He spared a glance back and saw figures at the shattered window. They'd be after him in short order. He welcomed it almost, now that he was in his right mind and unfettered, and in need of a fast way back to the city.

Another few shots, but they were far from the mark and he made the woods by the road. A lush forest, clearer in the wan light of dawn than it had been last night when it had all been shadows and hidden peril. A dancing green parrot scolded him from above, disturbed by his passage. He slowed, keeping close enough to the road, listening for the sound of pursuit. Careful now picking his way. If he survived another day, he'd feel the things he was trying hard to ignore, two fold. He'd probably feel them more now, if not for all the whiskey. So perhaps Winter had done him that small favor.

He clenched his fists, lifting the one with the dangling cuff, blood staining the metal around his wrist. Not his, for a change. If he had killed Winter - - and with that much blood, and the desperate force he'd put behind his blow, it was a possibility - - he wondered if Kaoru would approve this once. Or if she'd bow her head and mourn for his broken vow, no matter the monster that had prompted him to break it. He'd tried so very hard to live up to her belief in him, even if she had very little understanding of how cold and brutal the world could be.

Sano was more practical. Sano had said outright, no few times on the journey that had taken them here, that if Kenshin wouldn't do it, he'd happily kill the bastard that had thrown them all into this turmoil they found themselves.

He hadn't expected that it would be another life altogether that he'd end. A man whom he'd only ever seen this night. Collateral damage of Winter's war and honestly, Kenshin couldn't dredge up any great regret. It had been no innocent man who'd been about to perpetrate things upon him with Winter that he wanted very much not to dwell on. He'd had terrible flashes of memory last night, while they'd been amusing themselves with him, of things done in the mountains outside Tokyo - - though these English had practiced so much more restraint than the mountain bandits - - and it had fed the panic that lent him strength when his chance had presented itself.

He heard the thud of hooves fast approaching, muffled on the dirt road. Not many of them from the sound of it. He honestly had not expected an army, not with the aversion in the eyes of Winter's household staff. Other than Jun, they'd been an unwilling, frightened lot. The remaining Englishmen then, who very much enjoyed hunting down human prey.

He stepped out into the road, head lowered, listening to the sound of the hooves as much as watching them from under the veil of his bangs. Two horsemen. A shot rang out, and he felt the air move as it sailed past his head. A second and he moved half a foot to the side to avoid it. Looked up finally, picking his target, and brought up the arm with the sturdy chunk of wood he held, and hurled it like an ungainly blade at the closest rider. It took the man in the forehead, knocking him backwards off the rump of his horse.

The other rider, he recognized as Kilbourne, who had a pistol in one hand and was twisting his head in shock at the dispatching of his comrade. Crying out with rage he jerked on the reins of his wild-eyed, skittish mount, who likely wanted very little to do with this business of hurled projectiles and unhorsed riders. Kilbourne screamed something that Kenshin thought likely a profanity, and kicked his horse into bearing down.

It was simply a matter of stepping aside as the beast hurtled past, grabbing a fistful of main and tact, the horse screaming in protest, and launching himself up, slamming one knee into the massive body perched in the saddle. Kilbourne barely had the grace to stand without having to brace his legs for balance, keeping his seat astride on a moving horse that was scrambling for its own balance with Kenshin bearing down was an impossibility. He tumbled off the side, arms flailing and the horse, freed of no small weight, lurched forward, wanting distance between itself and this lunacy, with Kenshin clinging to its side. He pulled himself up, clutching mane and one leather rein. Clung low and let it run, half expecting shots to follow him.

None came. Kilbourne hadn't taken that fall well, then. Kenshin found he couldn't regret that tragedy either.

He caught up with the second horse on the road a good distance away from the house. Slowed his own mount and took the chance as the animals rustled in the young greenery at the side of the road to catch his breath. He leaned over his horse's neck, allowing himself the luxury of wrapping an arm around the throbbing ach in his side. The same rib, he thought with disgust. Sano would berate him for that carelessness.

He retrieved the dangling rein, and urged the horse into a distance-eating cantor, a smooth enough pace that it didn't have him gritting his teeth with each stride. There was no sign of pursuit. He had no notion of the way they'd taken to reach Winter's mansion, but he kept to the road that seemed the most traveled when he reached intersections and smaller trails leading off it. He passed few people. A lone cart pulled by a mule, led by a wizened farmer. A few men with baskets on their backs traveling the road on foot. He slowed once, and indicated the road he was on, and asked 'Colombo'? and got an affirmative nod.

Dawn had been washed thoroughly away by morning by the time he reached the first village on the outskirts of the city. More a collection of huts than anything else, the homes of farmers, no doubt, who tended the vast fields that surrounded the road. More traffic now, and he drew stares, himself ragged and shirtless on a horse with fine western tact. There were no English soldiers here though, so no one gave him more than a passing look. There would be though, when he reached the city and he didn't need that attention.

He breached a gentle slope in the road and the city sprawled below, bordered by sparkling coast and winding tributaries. The water was dotted with the tiny black shapes of ships, the harbors more crowded with them.

He'd made good time, he thought. He rode until he reached the outskirts of town, shanty huts and muddy streets, the smells of cooking, the smells of human sweat and animal waste. He dismounted, leading the horse, until he spied a hovel off the road with a rickety fence and collection of laundry hung out to dry. There was no one in the yard, so he opened the gate and led the horse in, let it go and took a threadbare shirt off the line. There was a battered straw hat lying near the well, and he took that as well, figuring the horse adequate exchange.

Back out onto the street then, amidst a great many people heading to and from the city proper. He gathered his hair into a knot and shoved the hat over it, obscuring an identifiable characteristic should any of Winter's 'friends' in the guard be on the look out for him. Simple to blend in with the natives then, with the hat shading his face and the shirt hiding the marks of the lash.

He found his bearings easily enough and headed towards the inn. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as soon as he rounded the corner onto the street where the inn lay. He kept walking, head down, aware of men loitering, trying to be casual in their surveillance. A pair of British soldiers taking their ease down the street, another few out of uniform under the awning of an outside tavern. There was no outward sign that anything unusual had happened here, but they were waiting for something. Him maybe, though it was improbable that word of his escape had beat him here. Saitou or Sano, then.

Saitou he trusted very much to avoid notice, but Sano was less circumspect. And if Sano had been in a panic over his disappearance, Sano might have engaged in foolish acts. If they'd taken him it would add whole new worlds of complication to Kenshin's life.

He walked past the inn, mingling with a group of native workers until he was a good ways down the street, before splitting off and heading towards the city center. If Saitou were to be found, a good place to start would be the embassy. At the very least they might be able to get a message to him or be aware of any Japanese citizens taken into custody.

A block down the busy street from it, he stopped, lingering by a cart selling carved figurines, and took in the unusual number of English soldiers patrolling the street. A pair stood brazenly outside the gates of the embassy itself blocking easy entrance. Kenshin moved down to the shadow of an alley where he could stand unobserved and figure out exactly what to do next. Finding Sano was a given, but he needed Saitou's connections and Saitou's fluency to discover what ships had left three - no four days - - past on their way west.

He'd been so close. He'd missed them by a day when he'd arrived here. His own fault for being weak enough not to have made better time chasing them down after Tokyo. His own fault for practicing restraint when that restraint had only hindered him. A few days would have made all the difference.

A rat scurried past his feet, into a crack in the wooden wall of the building he leaned against. He swung his head around, seeking what had startled the rodent into fight, and caught movement in the shadows. A dark figure coming at him, and he spun, one hand extended in warning, before he recognized Saitou and widened his eyes in surprise.

"Fool," Saitou didn't stop, knocking his arm aside and slamming the palm of his hand against Kenshin's shoulder, shoving him back against the wall. His back screamed bloody murder and Saitou kept coming, grabbing a fistful of Kenshin's collar and hissing. "Damned fool. I asked one thing of you - - patience. And it was beyond you."

Kenshin smacked Saitou's hands away from him. "Your interest in helping me only went so far as what benefited your investigation."

"Which is impossible now that you've stirred a hornet's nest of English furor. You attack an English noble in his home and expect there not to be consequences? I expect Sagara to act the idiot but I thought you possessed marginally more common sense. You proved me wrong."

Kenshin clenched his fists, patience this thin, brittle thing that held little tolerance for either Saitou's insults or his hands upon his person. He'd had more than enough of that from enemies in the past day.

"Where is Sano?" He asked softly.

Saitou was sharp enough to pick up the leashed tension in his voice, for he canted his head, studying Kenshin for a moment with narrow eyes, before shrugging. "As if I'm his keeper. But someone needs to be. Lax of you to leave him unsupervised."

"Saitou - -" Kenshin warned, too tired for insinuation. Just wanting to know that Sano was all right. That at least one thing that mattered to him was safe.

Saitou turned on his heels without answering, striding down the alley away from the embassy street. There was little choice but to glower in frustration and follow. Saitou slowed his pace once back out onto a pedestrian crowded street, casually stuffing his hands into his pockets and strolling along as if he hadn't a care in the world. Kenshin followed, looking very much, he suspected, like a ragged, shoeless servant skulking in the wake of master. He was beginning to limp, despite his efforts otherwise. He'd stepped on something during that last flight from Winter's house that had badly bruised the instep of one foot. The calf of the same leg was throbbing from the bite of one of Winter's dogs. He'd need to clean that soon, as well as the other puncture wounds, or he'd regret it.

Saitou led him out of the more affluent section of town, to a considerably more run down area. The buildings were barely more than huts with thatch roofs, the streets muddy and rutted and narrow. A great deal of the people loitered, having nothing better to do than squat in alleyways playing games of chance or gather and cast covert glances at passerby.

There was a hut down a narrow tract that Saitou headed towards. He didn't bother rapping on the flimsy door, merely pushed it open and strode in. Kenshin stepped across the threshold in his wake, barely had the chance to glance at the shadowed interior of the shack before Sano descended upon him, fists clenched and glowering.

"Where the fuck have you been?"

Kenshin stepped back hastily, all too familiar with Sano's methods of venting frustration. He was most certainly not up to being hit by Sano and keeping his feet in the process. He held up his hands, placating, staring with some small bit of desperation into Sano's angry eyes.

"Sano, I'm sorry - -"

"Sorry?" Sano's knuckles popped he clenched his fist so hard, shaking it in Kenshin's face. "You just take off with no word and you're gone all day and all night and you think 'Sano, I'm sorry's' gonna cut it? I ought to kick your ass."

Kenshin noted that the knuckles of the fist threatening him violence had already been bloodied. Knuckles scrapped and crusted with drying blood, as if Sano had been out brawling.

"You were worried. I apologize,"

"I wasn't worried, I was pissed off that you think you can't trust me to handle my end." Sano drew himself up, drawing all the wrong conclusions. Working himself into a lather over the indignity.

"You think I can't - -" Sano began, then stopped, narrowing his eyes. "What the hell happened to you?"

Kenshin supposed he had a bruise or a scrape or two visible.

"What the hell - -?" Sano grasped his wrist, the one with the dangling cuff, and held it up between them.

Saitou had lit a cigarette and was observing the two of them. "Excellent question, Sagara."

And that was it. He let his back hit the wall behind him, leaned there with his eyes shut, trying to formulate an answer that would satisfy Sano. And once he let himself simply stop, his endurance dissipated, taking his legs with it. He slid down the wall to the floor, sat there with his arms on his knees, with Sano gaping down at him in surprise.

"They're gone," he whispered, staring with wavery vision at the bloody cuff on his wrist. "Already on a ship bound for Europe."

"How the hell do you know that?" Sano demanded, sounding less sure of himself now.

Kenshin lowered his head, letting his hair hide the embarrassing wetness spiking his lashes. He wouldn't let Saitou see his weakness. He wished Saitou were not there, because he'd reached a point somewhere along the way, that leaning on Sano's strength when his own wavered was a welcome thing, instead of an embarrassing one. But not in front of witnesses, and especially not Saitou, to whom all weaknesses, in friend or foe, were things to be exploited.

"Winter told me," he said, voice breaking. Raw, like blood had scorched his throat.

"Winter? You saw the bastard?" Sano crouched in front of him.

"Yes. Water?"

It took Sano a second to register that. He grabbed a bottle off a ramshackle table and thrust it at Kenshin. Whisky it looked like and Kenshin laughed miserably. A little madly, and waved it away.

"Damnit, Kenshin," Sano complained and rose in a huff. "It's all I have, less you want me to walk down the street to the common well. And that's not gonna happen until you tell me what the hell happened."

He took a breath, swallowing and did. Part of it, at least. The things they needed to know. There were certain things the details of which he'd not speak.

Sano sat on the floor opposite him, swearing, wearing that look he had when he very badly wished to go and find trouble.

"Can you find the name of the ship?" Kenshin asked Saitou.

And Saitou, who'd been quiet during his explanation, hissed a curse under his breath - - a decidedly offending curse aimed at Kenshin - - and tossed the butt of his cigarette to the floor, stabbing his foot down upon it as if it were some poisonous insect. "So not only do you invade the homes of the English - - you leave a littered trail of their lords dead behind you to incite their wrath? What happened to your silly vow, Himura?"

"Shut the fuck up, Saitou," Sano surged up, fists clenched, putting himself right in Saitou's face.

Saitou looked at him in disdain, then past him down at Kenshin. "It doesn't matter what plots these lords were about, the English won't let this insult pass. They can't allow precedent that threatens their power. We'll be lucky to get off this island alive, much less find the name of a ship."

He stood there, staring narrowly at Kenshin for a few more silent beats, then turned, moving to a corner where a long black-sheathed blade rested. Beside it leaned Kenshin's sakabatou.

Saitou picked up his own, holding the scabbard lightly, the fingers of his other hand grazing the hilt. "You've caused me a great deal of trouble."

"He got you all the proof you need, signed, sealed and delivered, so I don't know what you're bitching about," Sano shot back.

Saitou smiled thinly. "It won't matter if I can't get it to someone who has the interest and the power to do something about them, and at the moment, you've made that a difficult task."

"Yeah, well," Sano grumbled. "If you wanted easy would you have taken this job?"

Saitou canted a brow, amused, it seemed. "Hnn. I'll not risk what contacts I have in the light of day, now that you've set the English on alert. Tonight I'll see what I can salvage. I'll see what I can find out about your ship."

Kenshin let his head drop, resting his forehead against a knee. Sano said something to him - - or maybe Saitou - - but the words were distant, obscured by the rushing of white noise and faint headedness.

There had been a brawl on the docks that Sano had initiated. He'd been pissed, and frustrated and annoyed at both Saitou for being a smug bastard and Kenshin for having no faith in him. And scared, though he hardly liked admitting the feeling. Scared that maybe Kenshin hadn't left him high and dry on purpose - - which feeling he should have gone with instead of convincing himself otherwise - - and being scared made Sano twice as determined to find trouble and knock it on its ass.

But, he convinced himself Kenshin had done what Kenshin always tried to do, which was shoulder the brunt of the burden, like he didn't think anybody else capable of pulling their own weight. Always trying to protect - - which was fine and good for the women and the kids - - but damnit, Sano could damn well protect himself. He could protect Kenshin's sorry ass, when he'd taken more than he could humanly deal with, so he ought to have figured out by now that leaving Sano behind was a bad idea.

So Sano had been pissed and Sano had been looking for trouble, and he'd found it, and started a brawl skulking around the docks, looking for sign of Kenshin, that had encompassed two or three dockside taverns by the time he'd cut and run, when the authorities had descended.

Saitou hadn't been pleased when he'd come back in the early hours of morning worse for wear than when he'd left the shitty little hovel Saitou was using as a safe house. Saitou had looked like he wanted to add a few bruises of his own, and though Sano would have welcomed the chance to get a few licks of his own in on the smug bastard - - he was owed, damnit - - Saitou had been sharpening that damned long sword of his, and it was naked in his hand and Sano wasn't stupid, thank you very much, despite what some people thought.

So he'd settled down on the threadbare futon and nursed the bottle of cheap whiskey he'd snatched on his way out of the brawl. Just planned to shut his eyes for a few minutes and get a little rest before he headed back out to see if Kenshin had showed back up at the inn, but it was full day when he woke, and Saitou was gone, and he was just getting himself up, head throbbing with the dregs of a hangover, when Saitou stalked through the door with Kenshin on his heels.

It had honestly taken Sano a good while to even register the details, he'd been so pissed off/relieved. The bruises, the stain of dried blood peeking out from under the collar of the threadbare shirt that Kenshin was wearing. The utter exhaustion in Kenshin's eyes. Like it was sheer willpower alone that was keeping him on his feet.

Come to find out, after Kenshin had quietly explained what had happened, it had been. He was an idiot, Sano was in agreement with Saitou there, for letting this happen without giving Sano a heads up what he was about, but Sano's desire to smack him up against the head sort of dissipated in the face of the knowledge that somebody else had already smacked him around pretty damned thoroughly. And to top it off, they'd missed Kaoru and the kid by days and the break in Kenshin's voice when he'd admitted that, made Sano itch to go out and shed some blood of his own.

He wanted to shed a little of Saitou's, because it was fine and well if _he_ bitched at Kenshin when Kenshin was down, but damned if Saitou had the right. And Saitou was mean about it, hitting Kenshin where it hurt and Kenshin just lowered his head and went quiet, likely berating himself a hell of a lot more than either one of them was.

It was a blessing when Saitou slunk out to do a little reconnaissance, to get a few supplies while Sano cleaned wounds Kenshin wasn't showing much interest in. He had a couple bad bites that Sano poured whiskey on to clean. Kenshin hissed softly the first shot that penetrated, but didn't make a sound after, just sat there while Sano fussed over him. Thinking maybe he deserved that pain, if Sano were any judge of Kenshin's more twisted rationales, and he liked to think he was.

Sano cursed a little himself, softly, under his breath, while he cleaned the dirt out of the scrapes on Kenshin's back. A lot of purpling marks, some of them deep enough to have broken skin, most of them made by somebody with a lash. Kenshin hadn't been big on the details of what had happened to him, but his body betrayed the truth of the matter.

He wasn't talking though, even when Sano pressed. His head drooped finally, while Sano was trying to pick the cylinder lock of the metal cuff around his wrist, lapsed into a fitful doze.

He started out of it when Saitou came back, eyes wide, hand searching for the hilt of a sword that wasn't there. Saitou had a few supplies, a package of food, some flat bread and curried rice, a staple hereabouts, that he tossed Sano's way.

Saitou sat down on the one rickety chair, just as good at his silences as Kenshin, until Sano couldn't stand it from either of them any longer and demanded. "Sharing a few damn details is not a bad thing. And that goes for the both of you. Assholes."

Kenshin cast him a look from under his hair, maybe an iota of guilt. Saitou's expression didn't alter, he just sat there, unwrapping his own piece of plain flatbread and eating silently. Not good company, which was news to Sano, after having been stuck on a boat with the bastard all those weeks.

Kenshin settled back down, gingerly resting his back against the wall, not much for idle conversation either. Sano muttered under his breath and portioned out the food. Kenshin didn't have much of an appetite, that was clear, but was practical enough to eat what Saitou had brought anyway. Times like this, it was no telling when the next meal might be.

Kenshin drifted off again, and Sano did, after finishing off what whiskey he hadn't used to clean Kenshin's wounds. He roused when Kenshin did, as Saitou was slipping out again, the open doorway showing that dusk had fallen.

He sat there afterwards, in the silence of Saitou's absence, and finally asked what he hadn't earlier. "So, you're not gonna tell me everything that happened, huh?"

He caught the glint of an eye as Kenshin flicked a glance up at him, but it was hidden soon enough when he lowered his lashes, lowered his chin and all Sano could see was the fall of hair. "No."

Simple enough. Sano nodded. A man had to respect that, even though he didn't like it.

Finally though, Kenshin did speak, voice soft enough that Sano had to lean forward to hear the words. "Saitou was right. I've made mistakes. Made choices that haven't been - - practical. I could have stopped this."

Sano drew a long breath, nodding. "Yeah, I guess you could have."

Kenshin looked up at him, that look in his eyes that was just a little bruised, just a little vulnerable, like the things Sano said mattered to him. And that - - that just made Sano feel like he wasn't such an idiot, good only for the grunt work and the brawls.

"I know you've had your fill of killing. I know it tears you up the things you did in the war - - but somebody had to do it, right? Somebody somewhere, always has to do the dirty work or it don't get done. I gotta tell you, I wish you'd gutted the bastard early on. Maybe it would have made a difference, maybe you'd still have had to chase Kaoru down. Maybe you and me would've never - - Either way, he'd be dead and a viper without a head ain't gonna come back and bite you when you're not expecting it. Go ahead, tell me how wrong that is."

Kenshin looked away, mouth tightening, saying nothing. Nothing he could say, when Sano knew damned well, he knew he was right. Kenshin might hold stubbornly to his ideals, but he wasn't naïve.

"You do what you gotta do," Sano said. He flopped back onto the futon, staring up at the cobwebby shadows of the ceiling. Not a lot to say after that, but he was glad he'd gotten it off his chest. Nothing to do but pass time waiting for Saitou to get back with information neither one of them was equipped to gather.

He dozed off again to the sound of gentle rain on the thatch roof. Woke again with Kenshin nudging him on the shoulder with one foot, letting him know Saitou had finally slunk back.

Saitou took the time to run a hand through wet hair, to brush rain off his damp jacket, before deigning to give them his attention.

"Well?" Sano asked, impatiently.

Saitou pulled a tin of cigarettes out of his pocket and tapped one of the brown sticks out, and even Kenshin got an annoyed look on his face and finally seconded Sano's query with one of his own as Saitou was lighting it.

"Saitou?"

"The name of the ship you're seeking is the Eastcourt." Saitou gave Kenshin a look. "The only European bound vessel that left four days past. Your wife and boy were on board."

Kenshin didn't move, but Sano could almost feel the sudden, rigid tension; the aura of utter focus that swelled out of nowhere as he stared at Saitou, waiting.

"As luck would have it," Saitou finally continued, enjoying no doubt, making them wait. "The Eastcourt has a week's layover in Madras to board passengers and cargo, before it starts the voyage home."

"How do you know they're on this boat for sure?" Sano asked.

Saitou gave him a look. "Because I bothered to learn the language and can ask a question without inciting a block wide brawl, you moron."

Sano bristled. Kenshin laid a hand on his shoulder, forestalling his retort.

"Can we reach Madras before they depart?"

Saitou mouth curved in something someone with a loose definition of the term, might have considered a smile. "I've booked you passage on a Dutch schooner named the Gravenhage, headed for Madras. It sets sail an hour before dawn."

Kenshin let out a breath, fingers tightening on Sano's shoulder. "You have my gratitude, Saitou."

Saitou snorted softly. "No, what I have is you in my debt. A great deal of debt that I will collect at a time and place of my choosing, Himura."

Kenshin inclined his head, accepting that with a hell of a lot more grace than Sano would have.

"You're on your own from this point out," Saitou said, heading for his pack against the wall, checking the rolled documents that Kenshin had procured, before buckling the thing up, and hauling it over his shoulder. He grabbed his sword, slipping it through his belt.

"You get a ride, too?" Sano asked.

Saitou inclined his head. "A Chinese junket headed for Hong Kong. From there - - home. It may be take some political maneuvering to have these men and their cohorts tried by the British government, but rest assured none of them or their interests will step foot on Japanese soil again without consequence. None of the ones Himura left alive, that is."

He had to get in that one last dig. Kenshin accepted it with an inclination of his head, though, which Saitou considered, then returned. A modicum of mutual respect. Saitou didn't even offer Sano a glance, before he shifted his pack and strode out the door.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Twenty-six

Saitou had brought clothing back, when he'd returned the first time with the food. Kenshin was not certain if it were consideration on his part, or if he simply didn't want his own escape possibly hindered by Kenshin wondering about the dockside, attracting attention in bloody, torn clothing. Rather, he suspected the latter. Saitou's courtesies tended towards the practical.

Still, it was appreciated, shedding blood crusted trousers and donning the clean, loose native clothing Saitou had appropriated. He might have preferred his own clothing, setting out yet one more time after Kaoru, but that was lost to him, in the inn where they dared not return. So he belted on soft brown trousers, and a coat not unlike a hanten, over his shirt that was long enough to hide the sakabatou. Ever practical, Saitou. He'd even brought sandals.

Sano had seen to his wounds. Sano had tended them with that gentle, competent touch that had surprised Kenshin since the mountains, but still, he stopped Kenshin when he was changing shirts, a hand on his shoulder where one of the dogs had gotten a tooth hold.

"This is your sword arm. You gonna have a problem if we run into trouble?" Sano's hand lingered, palm cool against the fevered skin around the bite. It was sore, a little stiff, but he'd battled through worse.

"No."

Sano nodded, sliding his hand to Kenshin's neck, under the hair he'd refastened into a tail, and Kenshin thought the question a pretense. Sano's insecurities were understandable - - Kenshin shared them - - but he hadn't the time or the patience to deal with them at the moment. Not when he wanted very badly to find the ship Saitou had procured for them, sooner rather than later, in the case they did run into that trouble Sano had suggested. But Sano didn't say anything more, just sighed and laid his forehead against Kenshin's, big hand on his neck. A surprising act of quiet commiseration that made Kenshin draw breath, off balance, not having expected it.

Then Sano drew away, embarrassed maybe, that evasive look in his eyes that hinted at it, at least, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Okay. You wanna get out of here, then?"

Kenshin nodded, crossing the lapels of the shirt and belting it, slipping the sword through that and donning the jacket loose to hide it. He would not go weaponless again, regardless of the local authorities disapproval. If he had to take up the argument physically, so be it. He had no intention of being here for longer than it took to board that ship and leave Ceylon behind him.

Sano snuffed out the candle and followed him out into the darkness. Hours yet till dawn and the sky was inky with cloud cover that spilled a steady, driving rain. No moon, no stars, but even with the lost time and disorientation he'd suffered, Kenshin's internal clock tended towards accuracy.

Sano didn't second guess Kenshin's sense of direction this time, following along, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his own native jacket, eyeing the dark alleys and the places possible danger might lie concealed. On edge as much as Kenshin. But the streets were quiet, abandoned in the hours of pre-dawn, the rain driving even the most relentless late reveler or diligent authority inside.

There were lights along the harbor though. Lanterns flickering weakly against stormy darkness. Always there were men awake and aware at the harbor, keeping ship's time, which was ruled by tides instead of night and day.

The port of Kolomtoa was one long stretch of boardwalk and docks, none of them labeled for the uninformed. Kenshin had no idea if a Dutch Schooner differed from a British one or an American one and comprehending foreign names painted on the bows of no few ships was beyond him. A daunting task, finding a particular ship, when the masts sprang like a vast, barren forest for what seemed miles of harbor. When only a portion of them were moored along the pier, a great many anchored in the bay, traveled to and from in small boats that even now dotted the water.

There was nothing to do but ask, which Sano did, having a greater grasp of the native language than Kenshin. Sano, like Kenji, had a knack for picking up foreign words and retaining them. Though he'd scoffed at Saitou's offer to teach on the voyage here, Sano having little patience for lessons that did not involve fighting techniques or sport, he'd picked up casual words easier than Kenshin. Sano claimed to be fairly adept with at least two Chinese dialects that he'd picked up during his travels on the mainland.

They were directed far, far down the harbor, by an inebriated old dockhand. A miserable walk, drenched and frustrated by the time they reached a stretch of docks where a round eyed sailor pointed when Sano spoke the name of the ship they were seeking and they saw a schooner three berths down with a modicum of activity. Men hunched under canvas coats in the rain, loading the last of provisions and cargo onto a fat bellied schooner with a much chipped, weather worn, golden haired mermaid gracing her bow.

"About damned time," Sano muttered, heading that way.

Kenshin started after him, then hesitated, something making the skin on the back of his arms prickle. He caught the edge of Sano's jacket, stalling his progress. Staring with intent into the shadows along the warehouse side of the dock, even as Sano paused, glancing back in question. He saw a glint of something. The almost imperceptible flicker of movement in the shadow of an alleyway.

Sano gave him a look, questioning and Kenshin flicked his eyes that direction, a subtle warning. Sano narrowed his own, glancing that way, but there was nothing now. Sano kept moving, casual saunter, that Kenshin followed, arms folded across his middle inside the jacket, fingers grazing the hilt of the sword.

The stone at Sano's feet spat up, simultaneous with the crack of gunfire. Sano yelped, dancing back, even as Kenshin looked for the source of the fire and found it as light flared from the muzzle of a gun on the roof of a building ahead of them. Sano was cursing, flinching as another shot hit too close, running for the closest shelter of an open doorway of a darkened warehouse with Kenshin on his heels.

Darker inside than out. The smell of tea battled with the stale smell of mold and dust, bales upon bales of dried leaves stacked within. There were the sound of footsteps pounding towards them, the tell tale clatter that he'd come to be familiar with from English soldiers when they ran. He did not wish a fight with them on the docks, within view of a ship he wanted badly to board. Why they were waiting for them here and now was in question though. Had they known they were coming, or simply posted at the docks, waiting to for them to attempt to escape?

He urged Sano deeper into the darkness, through the corridor made by bales of tea, even as men entered the warehouse in their wake. Turned down a maze made by bales and barrels and crates, and came to wide aisle where there was a light square of grey towards the far end. A back entrance leading out into stormy pre-dawn. That way then, towards avoiding this conflict and working their way around to the Gravenhage, slipping aboard unannounced if need be, in efforts to be on her when she sailed.

A man lunged out of the dark at them from between bales, wielding a knife, hard to see in the dark. Sano smashed a fist in his face before he could jab at him with it, and the man tumbled backwards into a bale. But he was only the first. Others scurried out like rats from the darkness, blocking the way out.

Natives mostly, with knives and clubs, but English soldiers mixed in. But not the usual spotlessly uniformed ones that usually patrolled the city. Collars loosened, jackets rumpled as if they'd spent hours at ease or, from the faint smell of alcohol, hours at a tavern, before they'd come here. It made sense. Winter had no official power here, but he'd claimed to have no few of his countrymen in his pocket. Off duty soldiers doing favors then, like the ones that had apprehended Kenshin at the park.

Kenshin stopped next to Sano, fingertips on his arm, a quiet warning to think before he jumped into a fray that involved no few guns. A few of them held lanterns, a stuttering light that cast more shadows that they chased away. But it would give them the light to aim by.

"The carrying of weapons is not permitted," one of the soldiers barked, rifle held at ready. Kenshin shifted his stance somewhat, giving them his side, not relaxing his hand on the hilt of his sword. Eyes traveling among them until he settled on a figure moving in from the darkness at one side. A bruised, sorry seeming man with darkened eyes and a bandage covering one side of his face.

Winter. Who had survived after all and stood there, between two of the English, a revolver in his hand, that he brought up, pointing directly at Kenshin.

"I should have listened to Jun's advice and killed you first chance I had."

Kenshin said nothing. Didn't move. Just stood there meeting Winter's gaze.

"I want those papers back, damn you," Winter snapped.

"I don't have them," Kenshin said softly.

Winter laughed, and there was the faintest trace of desperation amidst the bravado. A man that had risked much and lost much in the process. A man with very little more to lose but pride and his chance at vengeance. Sano's viper, waiting for his moment to strike.

"Did you think," Winter hissed. "I wouldn't know when passage was booked on the first ship out of port on the trail of your little girl?"

Kenshin's thumb caressed the tsuba of his blade, not quite enough pressure to slide the sword from the mouth of the scabbard.

"So, this is the bastard who caused all the trouble?" Sano casually inquired, giving Winter the once over.

Winter's eyes flicked to him. Others did, a shifting of nervous men.

"Looks like you kicked his ass right good," Sano remarked.

Winter's eyes narrowed and Kenshin saw the faint tensing as his finger tightened on the trigger. He moved before the retort of the gun echoed in the cavernous chamber, sword drawn so fast that sparks spit from the metal clearing the sheath. No thought involved, simply instinct that directed the blade and he felt the impact of bullet glancing off metal, a tinge in the tight scar tissue on his palm. He stood there, half in front of Sano, who the bullet had been meant for, glaring narrow eyed at Winter.

"Shit," Sano said, after the fact.

Winter blinked at him. No few of them did, scrambling to readjust weapons, the British glowering, trying stubbornly to seem unimpressed, the natives casting nervous looks amongst themselves.

Sano could hold his own against them, thugs with clubs and knives, given the chance, but guns were a whole different matter. There were only so many bullets that Kenshin could keep track of, before they cut one or the other of them down. The light was a problem. Men needed light to aim by, and there were two lanterns providing that.

"Kill them both, " Winter made a short, frustrated wave and Kenshin moved. Had to hope Sano did, as gunfire exploded, echoes of it reverberating through the warehouse.

He darted in, low, fast, feeling the blood rushing in his veins, the thud of his heart, the smooth leather of the hilt in his hand. He shattered the barrel of a gun before the second shot rang out. Knocked out the first lantern, and the man holding it. Delved into the mass of them, focused on nothing but the blade and the almost slow motion movements of the bodies around him. Took out the second lantern and this one shattered, the flames guttering on the ground. It needed a body to extinguish them. He provided it, toppling a native with a Billy club.

Darkness now, the warehouse plunged back into shadows. A few shots still ringing out, men yelling, and he couldn't spare a moment to discover if Sano were in the midst of it. Had to figure Sano was, Sano having a tendency to wade into danger instead of away from it. Sano would have to take care for himself, Kenshin could not allow himself to be distracted by it. His distraction, his weak spots for the things that mattered to him was how Winter kept getting the upper hand. And he had his own weaknesses to contend with, old wounds half healed and new ones reminding him very avidly of their existence.

He propelled himself over the back of the man he'd just dispatched, feeling the buzz of a bullet that whizzed past his head, lucky coincidence, and took a man with a rifle down. Came down and spun low, cutting the legs out from under another. Anything but the sakabatou would have hamstrung a man. Anything but the sakabatou would have left a trail of death in his wake.

Men cried out, scuffling, disoriented, the sounds of conflict that wasn't centered on him, letting him know Sano was holding his own. Kenshin crouched for a moment, half kneeling on the man he'd most recently downed, finding his bearing in the darkness. He took half a breath more to flex his hand around the hilt. He could ignore the pain, but he could not afford for a hand not entirely whole, to cost him his grip.

He saw the silhouette of a man in the doorway. Jammed the hilt of his sword into the gut of one staggering towards him from behind. Cut down another few unlucky enough to get in his way and took off after Winter.

Winter, half turned, fired at him as he ran out into the jumbled alley behind the warehouse. Kenshin dodged to the side, lunged in low and Winter fired again, not even aiming for him this time, aiming behind him. He heard a curse that sounded like Sano, ignored his own sense of self-preservation and looked back, seeing Sano clutching his side, back against the edge of the warehouse door.

Kenshin hissed air through his teeth and spun back and found himself facing the muzzle of Winter's gun. Too familiar a position. He froze, staring past that dark bole to Winter's eyes.

"You son of a bitch," Winter snarled at him, a furious man. A desperate one. "You've destroyed my prospects twice over. If you think I won't find your woman and your brat after I put a bullet through your brain and do the same to them, you're naïve."

He squeezed the trigger, but his finger lost strength even as his mouth opened, gaping, eyes shocked wide, looking down at the blade in his gut. A killing blow that angled up towards his heart. The same sort of blow that had killed Erizowa's daughter.

"You - -" Winter gasped on the last of his breath, then toppled, sliding off Kenshin's blade.

Kenshin stood there, staring, thinking he should feel something more than he did. When he'd killed the man at Winter's mansion it had been unintended - - a desperate reflex action and he'd regretted it. This - - he'd known exactly what it was he was about and gone about it with clean, quick efficiency. His vow truly thrown to the four winds and he couldn't - - at that moment - - work up the emotion to care.

The rain was washing the blood off his blade, turning it pink and translucent.

Blood.

Sano. He spun, numb washed away like the blood, as he recalled Sano hit. The look of surprise on his face. But Sano was still on his feet, back against the warehouse door, one hand inside his jacket against his side, but looking less than mortally wounded.

"Sano?" Kenshin moved towards him, blade still naked in his hand. There were bodies in the warehouse that were groaning, painfully trying to push themselves up.

"Winged me," Sano said, trying for a grin, but wincing instead. Kenshin swallowed, not believing him, reaching out with his free hand and lifting Sano's jacket. Sano moved his hand so Kenshin could see. A gouge above Sano's hip, bleeding profusely, but not deep.

He looked up, meeting Sano's dark eyes. Worried eyes.

"You okay?" Sano asked.

Kenshin was not aware that he'd taken wounds. But then, he didn't think that was what Sano had meant. He shook his head, finding that he could not, at the moment, speak of it. He thought Kaoru would be terribly disappointed in him. All her faith shattered. She might not look at him the same again and she might have the right, because all it took to invite the stain back in was the blood at the end of a blade. He'd spent years convincing himself of just that, after all.

Sano's fingers caught his jaw, and he blinked, surprised, into Sano's eyes again. "Remember. Snake. Head. You did what needed doing. Don't forget it."

Sano wasn't sure Kenshin believed him. Despite the grim look on Kenshin's face, there was something hollow in his eyes. Guilt, self-recrimination - - who the hell knew what was going through his head with his sword fresh from gutting the son of a bitch who lay in a wet heap in the mud beyond them. The rest of the bastards were certainly alive, some of them struggling back to painful consciousness even now.

Sano pushed himself off the wall and put an elbow into the face of a man that had staggered out from the shadows of the warehouse, and Kenshin blinked, having missed the movement entirely, which just boded damned ill if Kenshin's attention was that badly shot. Kenshin didn't miss things. Not even the little stuff.

Sano caught Kenshin's arm, getting them moving, ignoring the sting of the bullet graze in his side. Hard to tell if it were blood or rain dribbling down his hip, but he didn't have the luxury to stop and find out. Kenshin shook off whatever had been stalling him, and sheathed the sword, picking his way behind Sano through the narrow little passage between this warehouse and the next. Garbage littered and treacherous, it was as quick a way back out to the pier as they had available to them.

Onto the dockside street and other than a sailor at the rail of the closest ship at berth staring with sluggish interest in the direction of the warehouse, their little scuffle, gunshots and all, had caused no one to spill out into the streets to find out the source of the commotion. Sano figured anyone sleeping it off on this street, was probably too drunk for a little late night or early morning brawl to disturb them.

Kenshin slipped warily past him though, hand on the sheath of his sword, moving that way he did when he was on the prowl, that perfectly lethal grace that he moved with when he wasn't trying to hide it and make the world think he was something less than what he was.

Sano was less cautious and strode out, staring up at the rooftops, figuring if there was somebody still up there willing to shoot at them, they might as well get it over with. But no shots came. Nobody came pursuing them at all, the hired thugs probably running soon as they realized their payroll was dead, and English soldiers more than likely not wanting to have to explain how they'd come to be embroiled in this to begin with. But that wouldn't last. Somebody would grow balls and report it to somebody not in Winter's pocket. So he and Kenshin needed to be safely out of here before the law descended.

Their ship was a couple of berths down, maybe far enough for the men scrambling around deck not to have noticed the scuffle down the street. Maybe not, because a big, pale haired guy with a glower and wicked boat hook in hand, barred their way before they even got the end of the boarding ramp.

"Gravenhage?" Sano pointed to the ship.

The guy nodded warily and Sano gave him his best, least threatening smile and said in Ceylonese. "We've got passage booked."

The guy stared at them dubiously, stared down at the hilt of Kenshin's sword and damned if Kenshin didn't have an expression on his face that might have given any sane man pause. So Sano sort of shouldered in front of him, amazed that he was the one having to put on the harmless, negotiators face, and repeated, slower, in case he'd spoken it wrong, or the guy didn't understand the language any better than he did.

"Sagara." He indicated himself, then jerked a thumb back at Kenshin. "Himura. Guy booked us passage yesterday."

The sailor frowned, then barked something over his shoulder, and another darker fellow came to the end of the ramp and looked down and said something back. Completely incomprehensible language. It didn't even sound like English.

Then, the dark one said in heavily accented Japanese. "You late. Another few minutes - - left without you."

He beckoned and they edged past the boathook and up the ramp.

"No baggage?" The dark one asked.

"Traveling light." Sano shrugged.

The sailor motioned them to follow as if he had better things to do, and led them to the hatch leading below decks. "Cabin this way."

They passed the open door of another cabin, where a matronly woman in a sari and a girl looked up at their passage, then down to the end of the corridor to a room little larger than a closet with two hammocks on hooks, one above the other, neither one long enough, Sano thought, to accommodate his length. Figures Saitou would book them the cheapest berth possible.

He leaned against the door while the sailor left, wondering if they'd get breakfast, while Kenshin stood half in the room, staring blindly at the dusty corner. Reliving things inside his head, Sano figured. Second guessing himself maybe. Thinking up ways to ramp up that guilt he liked to carry around. Idiot.

Sano lifted his jacket finally, looking down at the finger thick furrow in his side. It was still bleeding, soaking into the waist of his trousers.

"Sano," Kenshin finally swung his attention back to reality, and stared with concern at the wound.

Sano shrugged. "No big deal."

"We need to stop the bleeding." Kenshin looked around for something to accomplish that. There were wool blankets inside the unstrung hammocks, but damned if Sano wanted scratchy wool against a fresh wound. He was ready to tear a few strips off the hem of his jacket when there was a soft feminine gasp and the older woman from down the hall stopped in the passage and stared with dark, black rimmed eyes at his bleeding side.

"It's okay -" he started, figuring she'd freak out and maybe call one of the crew and the last thing they needed was trouble before the ship was out of dock. But she only called something to the girl, who stuck her head out their cabin door, then swept past Kenshin who was standing there dripping, and not doing much of anything useful, and took charge like a woman who was used to men who didn't have the sense to care for their own needs.

"How long has this been bleeding? Come, come," she urged him out of the doorway and down the hall towards her cabin. He gave Kenshin a bemused look in passing and let her pull him that way. He half saw Kenshin slide the sheathed sword out of his belt and set it inside their own small cabin, before he drifted after, standing in the corridor outside the door while the girl gave the woman strips of cloth to clean the wound, then opened a box filled with little jars.

The woman spoke excellent Japanese, though she was Hindu if Sano were any judge. Old enough to be his mother. Hell, old enough to be his grandmother, maybe, but still not bad looking with her black hair only lightly streaked with grey and pulled back tightly in a bun at the back of her neck. She had a red bindi dot on her forehead, and large dark eyes that spoke wisdom and mystery.

She dabbed ointment of some sort into the furrow, which stung like a bitch at first, then turned the whole thing blessedly numb. Then placed a thick wad of clean bandages over it and secured it with a strip of cloth wound round his waist a time or two.

"Thanks - - for this," he indicated his newly bandaged wound, shrugging on his damp jacket again, feeling a little embarrassed, standing there with bare torso in front of a pair of strange women. "Umm - - you speak pretty good Japanese."

"As do you," the woman smiled at him and he thought maybe there was a gentle jibe there, but wasn't certain.

They stood staring at him, the old one and the young one, who was looking up from under her lashes, a slight smile on her face, less subtle than her mistress.

"Um - -yeah. Thanks," Sano backed out, feeling awkward. Kenshin bowed at them politely, silently, and preceded Sano down the corridor back to their own cabin. Better to stay off deck and out of sight until the ship sailed out of dock.

"Well," Sano said, taking stock of the cabin. There was a spindly table bolted to the wall with a chamber pot atop it. A couple of nets for stowing gear hanging from hooks inside the door. That was it. The top hammock, when strung up looked to put a man's face not far from the low ceiling. Neither one offered many options to do anything other than sleep, unless a man got damned creative. All things considered, Sano doubted Kenshin would be up for anything mundane, much less creative for the foreseeable future. Which meant this was going to be a long five days sailing to Madras.

"You get the top bunk." Sano flopped down on the newly strung bottom one. Kenshin gave him a tired look. Slowly let himself fold down to a comfortable position, cross-legged against the wall next to the corner where his sword was, gone silent, turning things over in his head.

Sano sighed, figuring that going over it again a waste of his breath. Kenshin would chew on this as long as he had to, either coming to some reasonable conclusion or some skewed, honor bound one that only someone raised in the way of a hidebound samurai could fathom.

"I think I'll take a nap." Sano stuffed his hands behind his head, finding a comfortable enough position in the hammock if he let one leg dangle just so. "Wake me if they ring the breakfast bell."

It wasn't breakfast that woke Sano from his doze, but a crack of thunder. He started awake, clutching for support that wasn't there as the hammock swayed. This was no ship at port, but one well out to sea, he could feel it in the constant, rollicking motion when he put his feet to the deck.

"Damn, " he swore softly, having no fondness for storms at sea. The last one, on the boat back from China to Japan, had had him vomiting into a pail for a day and a half. That was one of those little details he'd left out of his adventures when he'd recounted them to Kenshin.

Kenshin who still sat against the wall, arms across his knees, head down, dozing maybe, despite the storm in that guarded position he'd resort to when there were enemies at his back, or demons nipping at the edges of his sanity. Sano figured those demons were mightily agitated now.

He sighed, swinging his legs off the hammock and perching there a moment as the boat tipped under him, trying to steady his head and his stomach. Whatever had been blowing into port when they'd boarded this ship, they'd apparently sailed right into. He blew out a breath, trying to find that calm that would stave of nausea. Stretched and winched a little at the pull from the wound in his side. His clothing was dry though, so he'd slept a good few hours, he guessed.

He nudged Kenshin with his foot and his head came up, eyes mostly hidden by unruly hair.

"So looks like we've got a storm." Sano stated the obvious.

Kenshin didn't offer response. He looked a little paler than usual. Maybe not dealing so well with all the rocking of the deck either. It made Sano feel a little better, the idea of shared nausea.

"I'm hungry. Gonna head to the galley. Coming?"

Kenshin shook his head. The long silences always tended to make Sano a little crazy. A little irritable.

"You gonna sit here and sulk?"

Kenshin slanted a narrow eyed look up at him.

And it wasn't fair, accusing him of it. Really it wasn't. This was a no small thing to Kenshin. It had been no small thing when he'd admitted to the death at his hands at Winter's estate and that hadn't really even been his fault, far as Sano could see. What he'd done to Winter - - well, Sano had heard those threats - - Sano would have killed the guy and it wasn't even his family that had been on the receiving end of them. It was a wonder Kenshin had been thinking at all. Likely, he hadn't been.

But, Kenshin pushed himself up. A little less graceful than usual. A little effort put into gaining his balance once he had his feet under him. The sway of the deck maybe - - maybe he'd just gone stiff and sore from the damage he'd taken under Winter's care, finally. It was overdue.

Sano stuffed his hands into his pockets, and headed out the cabin down the corridor and the hatch leading down. Found the galley easy enough by the scent of food. It smelled like gruel and exotic spices - - not an entirely appealing smell when he was a little unsteady on his feet - - but his stomach was rumbling despite it and Sano was game to give it a try.

A long narrow cabin, with two plank tables with benches bolted to the floor and a swinging door leading to the galley proper. This was the passenger galley, not the crew one, and there were about a half dozen people already there. The two Indian women. A group of Hindu men with beards and turbans gathered together at the end of the table. An elderly European looking man with his nose in a book, ignoring them all. The women were playing some game involving an embroidered, cross-shaped piece of cloth and an array of small gaming pieces.

A ship's boy, dark skinned and skinny and not more than twelve, asked in English what they wished. Sano caught part of the question. The elderly Indian woman was kind enough to translate. "He asks if you wish breakfast?"

"Sure," Sano said and glanced at Kenshin

"Just tea."

The lady told that to the lad, and the boy scurried through the galley door.

Sano sat down not far from the women, Kenshin settling beside him. He leaned an elbow on the table and put on his smooth smile. He had hit and miss success with women, some loved him, some hated him and damned if he knew exactly what any of them were thinking, but these two had helped him out and he assumed some good will from them.

"Thanks. Again. I keep meaning to pick up a little English."

The older woman inclined her head. "Wise choice. The English are voracious in their pursuit of empires. Knowledge of their tongue is only prudent."

"You're pretty good at a lot of languages, huh?"

"My husband was a scholar of some repute."

The boy brought out a trey with a bowl of lumpy, white porridge and two metal mugs of tea. Kenshin looked at Sano's bowl, then away. Sano took a breath, figured if it came up again, it couldn't look much worse than it did now, and delved in.

"What game is that?" Kenshin asked softly, sounding a little strangled, and probably not really caring about it as much as he was trying to get his attention away from the sight and smell of Sano's breakfast.

"It is called Chopat," the older one said. "It is a very old game."

Kenshin gave her a faltering smile, inclining his head, but his heart wasn't in engaging in conversation, that was clear. Sano slid down the bench, leaving his empty bowl behind, and looked at the game himself. It didn't seem the sort of thing one might easily place bets on - - it seemed rather a long, complicated mess, so his interest was limited. But the younger girl was pretty - - dark and exotic - - and it was better than sitting there trading silences with Kenshin.

"So, you two headed for Madras, huh? You live there?"

"For many years," the matron said. "I am Pakshi wife of Narasimha Chopras. This is Satya, my niece."

The girl lowered her lashes and gave Sano a flirty look. A man had to be flattered, especially sitting next to Kenshin who had the irritating and entirely unwitting ability to draw female attention. Sano remember fondly how it had habitually driven Kaoru mad. Doubly so when Kenshin hadn't noticed half the time.

"Satya. Pretty name." Sano grinned at her. The girl didn't blush, and she should have, sitting next to her aunt and looking at Sano the way she was looking. Or maybe it was just him being used to Japanese girls and not Indian ones, and she wasn't really casting him an invitation with her pretty eyes.

"Thank you, Pakshi san, for your help before," Kenshin said. And maybe he'd noticed the invitation in the girl's eyes too - - amazing - - because there was actually the slightest hint of edge in his voice, which made Sano's grin all the wider.

She inclined her head, accepting that. Waiting for them to return the favor of names.

Sano jumped in when Kenshin didn't immediately. "I'm Sano. He's Kenshin."

"What business do two fine Japanese gentlemen have in Madras?" the niece asked tartly, and Sano had to laugh, never having had the occasion to be called a fine gentleman before.

"We're after a ship," Sano said, and caught the barest flicker of Kenshin's eyes. Not happy with him blurting their intentions for all to hear. Kenshin could be damned secretive, but then, Kenshin had grown to manhood in the midst of a lot of dicey politics and backstabbing during the revolution, so maybe it was just survival instinct. Sano sure hadn't had to deal with the dark maneuverings of the minds behind the Meiji when he'd been doing his part in that same revolution. He hadn't been anybody's weapon - - not like Kenshin had been.

"Ah. Many ships travel to Madras."

"This one has a girl and a kid on board - -"

"Sano - -" Soft warning.

"Yeah? I don't see what difference it makes."

Kenshin said nothing to that flare of temper. Just folded his hands around the mug of tea and stared into its faintly rippling surface. The woman, Pakshi, watched him for a moment, dark eyes moving from him to Sano.

Finally she turned her attention back to the game. "Would you care to learn - -?"

"Sure." It was close to a week's sailing time from Colombo to Madras, India. What else did he have to do?

Chapter Twenty-seven

The storm dwindled to uneasy seas and light rain by nightfall. By the following day, the skies were blue and the seas ahead clear and smooth, the deck rolling gently underfoot instead of bucking with the vengeance of angry sea spirits. A relief to have equilibrium back. Kenshin felt naked without it. Sunlight was a welcome thing, after a day spent in the musty underbelly of a ship. Passengers and crew alike found reason to be on deck.

The ladies had spread a blanket on deck towards the stern, long, colorful scarves protecting them from spray and wind as they chatted, embroidering complicated patterns on cloth. Sano sat with them, outside the edge of their blanket, having failed during the previous evening to find a game of chance among the crew. The Gravenhage's captain was a man of fervent Christian faith and frowned mightily upon gambling or drinking or carousing of any mischievous nature on his ship. Which left Sano no option but to find entertainment where he could.

Kenshin was admittedly poor company, his focus narrowed and aimed at a goal that was very close to his reach. Four days. Four days and they would close a gap that had seemed insurmountable at times. The lady Pakshi had offered, when they reached Madras, to have one of her boys guide them in the city to the most likely places travelers would stay waiting for their ship to sail.

Sano had told them more than Kenshin would have preferred, but perhaps Sano's openness had gained them something - - an interest from a lady of wealth, in what must have seemed, from Sano's abridged story, a great adventure. Sano had a knack for story telling and an imagination for changing relevant facts with flourish. The ladies had been rapt. An abducted wife and child. An exhausting pursuit. Sano glossed over the blood and the pain as if it had all been some grand adventure and Kenshin, finally having taken all he could, had left the galley and retreated, sick to the core from causes above and beyond the tossing of the ship.

Angry at Sano. Shamed by the looks of pity the women had passed his way, because of tales he'd very much rather Sano had not spun. He hadn't spoken to Sano till the next morning, pretending sleep, when Sano finally returned to the cabin. And Sano had given him a look then, a careless, smug arch of the brow when Kenshin finally had to confront him - - hard not to in a room barely bigger than a storage closet - - that made Kenshin grind his teeth and work hard to subdue the urge to do him some violence. Until Sano told him about the aid he'd garnered from the lady, who, Sano confided was very concerned with the plight of a woman and child stolen from their home.

Kenshin had bowed to her when he'd seen her on deck, and quietly offered thanks, and she'd patted his hand and given him another of those sympathetic looks that made him curl up a little inside in embarrassment. One could only guess what else Sano had told them after Kenshin had left him to his own devices.

Through the morning, he sat with his back to the deckhouse and watched the endless patterns of light and shadow in the swells. Lunch broke the pattern and he had enough of an appetite back to take rice and a bit of salted fish on deck. Sano sat down next to him and consumed his own food with the quiet intensity Sano usually devoted to meals.

Sano sat afterwards, giving him a sidelong look. "Still pissed?"

"I wasn't - -"

Sano snorted at that flat out lie.

Kenshin picked a last grain of rice from his bowl with his fingers and flicked it over the rail into the sea. "No."

Sano grinned. "Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little."

Kenshin rolled his eyes, snorting himself. "You, the great philosopher."

"Hey, don't sell me short. I'm deeper than I let on, you know."

He sat his empty bowl down, leaned back against the deckhouse. Quietly admitted. "I know."

Sano turned his own bowl in his hands, chewing that admission over, seeming a little embarrassed.

"So, you ought to come over and sit with the ladies. Pakshi's teaching me a few phrases in English - - you know - - the sort of things you need to know how to ask in a foreign city."

Kenshin recalled nights spent at the dojo, Kaoru eagerly soaking up the knowledge Winter was all too willing to impart. Of Kenji running to him on his short legs, his round face beaming with the delight of picking up a new word. A foreign word. Kenshin had no desire, he really didn't, of learning that tongue. What was the need once he found Kaoru and Kenji and returned them safely home?

Sano said something in that language and sat there, waiting for Kenshin to inquire after meaning. It was either give in or sit there under Sano's stare, so he sighed and asked.

"Where's the brothel?" Sano cackled, utterly pleased with himself.

"She did not teach you that?" It seemed improbable that a lady of Pakshi's apparent quality would.

"Satya did. She's got a wicked streak. I like her. I've heard stories, you know, about some of the things Indian women know how to do to please a man."

"She's not a prostitute, Sano."

"Who said anything about prostitutes? I saw _pictures_, when I was in China."

Kenshin remembered very well Sano's tales of his _adventures_ on the mainland. At the time of telling, not long on the trail from the mountains beyond Tokyo, he'd felt no particular concern. It bothered him a little now, the idea of Sano and the women he'd claimed to have bedded. It bothered him in a new and unique way when Sano flirted shamelessly with a sloe eyed Indian girl behind the back of her Aunt, if not directly in front of her. He wondered if it were jealousy. He'd never had the occasion to experience the feeling before. He'd loved two women in his life and neither had given him the occasion to doubt. Properly raised Japanese girls both and above repute.

Improperly raised, street brawlers, who drank and gambled and had no shame visiting the red light districts - - having wheedled and whined trying to talk _him_ into visiting with him on no few occasions - - put him off his balance in ways that he'd never been off it before.

"I would not mention these pictures to the ladies, if I were you."

"You think not?" Then Sano considered, eyeing him with speculation. "Some of those pictures - - interesting positions, you know? Crazier than any shunga I've ever seen. Be interesting to try some out."

"Sanosuke." Kenshin felt vaguely scandalized, speaking of such things mid-afternoon, with no few people on the deck with them. He cast a look under his hair to see if anyone lingered close about.

Sano chuckled, still amused with himself, then pushed himself up, gathering the bowls to take back to the galley.

"So, I 'm game to learn a little more before we get there. Should've taken Saitou up on it on the first boat ride - - but Pakshi's a better teacher. Doesn't make me want to smash her face in every other sentence, so just as well. When you feel the need for company, come on over."

He did eventually drift over, settling against a coil of rope and listening to their talk. Sano was charming in that way he had, uncouth, but earnest, with that white grin and his black rimmed eyes and the unruly fall of dark hair that had the ladies, even matronly Pakshi giggling at his wilder claims, and listening avidly as he told of this exploit of his or that. Kenshin did not doubt there was no small bit of exaggeration if not downright fabrication in some of the tales. Sano had a taste for fable and happily wove it into his own stories when he was out to impress impressionable listeners.

With evening came cloudy skies and light rain, which chased them below decks. The ladies retreated to their cabin, and Sano and Kenshin to theirs, having little to do after supper but while away the time in cramped quarters. Kenshin unsheathed his blade, the first time since the fight on the wharf, and went about meticulously cleaning it. The rain had washed away the blood, but there were always nooks and crannies in the leather of the hilt, or the steel of the guard that might hide specks of red.

He'd spent the night before, waiting for some guilt or shame or feeling of failure on his part to wash over him for Winter's death. But none came. Only the subtle relief of knowing the man would plague him and his no longer. He worried that it came too easy, the acceptance of that death at his hands, when very few of the deaths he had carried out in the name of the restoration had. He remembered faces, even the briefest flashes of the death masks of men that he'd cut down in passing, obstacles to some greater goal. Heads that had tumbled under the arc of his steel, staring up at him in shock, before someone else came to claim them as trophies in a war of change. Not all warriors. Innocents too, that had met their end at his hand, at the command his masters, houses of the Shogunate that could not be allowed to be a point at which their soldiers rallied.

Those were the worst. There had not been a night, for close to five years after he'd left the service of the Meiji that he'd not dreamt of those faces and woke sweat drenched and shivering, despising himself for the things he had done. He'd cleaned his blade those days, to the point of fanaticism.

Sano watched him lazily, sprawled in his hammock, arms folded behind his head. Supper tonight had been fish stew and flatbread and fresh fruit. It was a short voyage, from Ceylon to Madras and the ship's cook could afford to splurge. Sano was happily full, barefoot and shirtless, and sucking on a stick of flavored sugar that Pakshi had given him. She had changed his bandage after supper, as well and Sano had begged a small portion of the salve she used and a few clean bandages for the wounds on Kenshin's shoulder and leg. The worst of the dog bites that were not healing as quickly as the rest.

"You've been at that for a while. You think it's clean yet?"

Kenshin ran the cloth up the length of steel and wished for a whetstone. There was the tiniest whisper of a knick on the sharp side. The result of the bullet he'd deflected from Sano, perhaps. It bothered him, that faint imperfection in his blade.

Sano swung off the hammock, ambled over and slid down the wall next to Kenshin.

"Want some?" He offered the sugar stick and Kenshin shook his head.

"Tastes sweet, with heat at the same time. Exotic."

Kenshin paused, canting a look up at him. "You like the idea of exotic."

Sano shrugged. "Yeah. Guess so. There's nothing like discovering something new. Learning something new. New foods. New faces. New trouble to mix up." He grinned.

"So - - if you had a girl like Satya - - new and exotic - - would you be happy?"

"Why? You think she's looking for a husband or just a good lay?"

Kenshin snapped his mouth shut, turning the blade to examine the guard.

Sano made a sound, and risked the naked steel in Kenshin's hand to lean against him, one arm snaking around his neck to draw him close. "You're an idiot."

"Occasionally," he admitted, the sword carefully across his knees.

Sano sighed, leaning back, arm still draped across the back of Kenshin's neck. He smelled of the rainwater they'd both washed up with before the supper bell and sweet spices of the sugar stick. If he found a woman, it would be a practical thing. Best for all involved. But not an Indian one. Not unless she were willing to live in Japan - - because Sano across a sea would not be an acceptable thing. A quiet, Japanese wife, who would take care of him. A good cook - - Sano would like that - - but plain faced, who might inspire very little creativity with Sano in the privacy of their room. Or none at all. Perhaps this fictional wife and Kaoru might become fast friends, keeping each other company, while he and Sano - -

He shut his eyes, grip tightening on the hilt of the sword and thought, _this is what I've come to_. _No honor left to me and I can't stop it. _

He slid the sword back into its sheath. Sano broke off the end of the sugar stick and offered it. This time Kenshin took it, closed his own eyes and leaned against Sano as the sweet spices melted in his mouth. Sometimes simply soaking up Sano's heat, shoring himself up against Sano's youthful vitality when he felt his own waning - - and sharing his company - - was enough.

There were gulls soaring overhead, specks against the blue sky, diving now and then into the waves, fishing for mackerel. The surest sign that land was not far ahead. A day, the captain promised, and they'd see the coastline of India.

Not soon enough. Holding onto patience and calm seemed an insurmountable thing, when his body wanted something - - anything - - to occupy it. He wanted to pace the deck, and had, until the crew began giving him wary looks. He supposed they would take less kindly if he brought the sakabatou on deck and went through patterns and stances and guards, disciplined repetitive moves that blanked the mind of anything but the weight of the sword and the balance of the body it was an extension of.

Sano tired of trying to talk to him mid-day and retreated to the company of the ladies. Kenshin thought, after two days of their company, that Sano was infatuated far more with Pakshi than her pretty niece. Pakshi treated him like an indulgent mother, offering praise and sweets and Sano lapped it up.

They were playing some game involving cards, on a blanket on the deck, one of the male Hindu passengers making up a fourth, when the crewman high up in the crow's nest above the rigging called out, and sailors moved to the forward deck to see what was about.

The captain strode out himself, with his looking glass, and stood with his first mate, pointing at square white sails in the distance. The passengers crowded in amongst the crew, shading their eyes and watching the steady approach of the other ship.

"They say it is a frigate," Pakshi said, standing at the rail between Sano and her niece. "A British warship."

Kenshin scanned the horizon, the sky darkening just enough to the east to hint that the weather was fouler there than here. There was a tiny flash of reflection there. A glimpse of shape against the grey.

"There's another there."

The ladies turned, Satya commenting to a nearby crewman, who called forward to his superiors. There was a murmur then, of question among them, as the captain swung his glass east.

"War ships usually patrol the coast?" Sano asked.

Pakshi shrugged. "They come and go. Madras is a major port."

It took better than an hour for the frigate to close on them and there were signals exchanged, a combination of flags waved between ships and the Gravenhage's captain called for this crew to furl the sails, and slow the ship to a crawl as the warship sailed close, portside to starboard. The frigate rode taller in the water than they did, sporting more sails, longer stern to aft. Its deck was crawling with crewmen and crisply uniformed officers, its hull lined with the dark mouths of canon ports. The captains met at their respective rails, exchanging hurried salutations, a rapid-fire chatter of information none of which Kenshin could comprehend. The crewmen seemed rapt though, whispering among themselves, passing bits of information down the line as their officers conferred.

Pakshi brought a hand to her breast, a look of dismay on her face.

"What? What is it?" Sano demanded, his few phrases in English not enough to understand what they were saying. What the whispers among the crew were about.

"They're searching for survivors," Satya said, before her aunt could wave a sharp hand at her in warning.

"Shush, girl. Listen for the details else you speak falsely."

Satya shut her mouth, biting her lip. Looking towards the bow - -distinctly not looking at him.

"Survivors of what?" Sano asked and Kenshin was glad of it, for he found himself oddly short of breath.

"A ship," Pakshi said softly. "A ship gone down in a storm three days past. They're asking our captain if we've seen wreckage - - or sign of survivors."

"Oh," Sano said, eyes scanning all those dark portholes with their hidden cannons. Then sliding back to the men at the rail. Finally asking the pertinent question. "What ship?"

"This time of year, the storms come and go fast. Ships sink. Fishing vessels litter the ocean floor. I'll go and find out." She beckoned Satya and the girl fell into line, the two of them weeding their way though the mulling crew towards the ship's officers.

The Frigate was moving away, ponderous grace as she cut through the waves, rocking the smaller schooner with the backwash of her departure. Kenshin stood with his hands on the rail, wood biting into his palms.

"It's not her ship," Sano said. "Like Pakshi said, some fishing vessel out too far, caught in a storm."

Kenshin stared at the square back of the departing frigate. "Would the British send their warships to search for the survivors of some native fishing boat?"

Sano didn't have an answer for that. Kenshin didn't look at him to see - -he couldn't take his eyes off the swell of waves. His pulse was thudding, racing like he was in the midst of some great battle. He blew out a breath, forcing calm. Trying to quiet the riot his thoughts wanted to stir. Sano was right. It could not be her ship, among all the ships that came and went from a port the size of Madras. And three days past - - her ship should have been in port - -unless - - unless it had taken the passage slower, laden with more cargo than this sleek, lightweight passenger schooner they traveled upon.

"Kenshin, stop worrying. It can't be her ship. Our luck can't be that bad, right?"

"Of course," he said, hardly hearing himself. Not _their_ luck. His luck. _His_ karma that had demanded so little payment of him for all the black marks he had against him.

The ladies were coming back, two graceful, colorful figures among a sea of men in seaman's drab. The niece behind with her head down, shawl covering her glossy hair, hiding her expression, the aunt with her face set - - not a woman who let emotion get the best of her. And he was scared of a sudden of what she had to say. Terrified to the core of him.

"Well?" Sano turned on them, impatient.

She turned her eyes to him instead of Sano. "It was a vessel that sailed under the flag of the British East India company. She was the Eastcourt. So far no survivors have been found. I am so very sorry."

"Wait. Wait, are you sure?" Sano was pressing her. "But they're still searching, right? Why would they still be searching if they didn't think - -?"

She was answering him, calmly, softly, and Kenshin couldn't focus on the words. As if the Japanese she and Sano spoke had turned into foreign gibberish. He stood there, swallowing and swallowing. Lost. Nothing he could do with a sword and all the skill in the world to prevent a storm from consuming a ship. Three days down. Three days - - and Kenji couldn't swim. Kenshin, having no skill at it himself, had never had the occasion to teach him. Remiss of him, really, living in a city full of canals on the edge of Tokyo bay.

A hand on his shoulder an intrusion into personal space and indignant anger exploded. He spun, catching the offending wrist and shoving backwards. Sano yelped, staggering, wide eyed and shaking the hand and Kenshin stared at him, red around the edges of his vision, half aware of the shocked faces of people beyond him. Blurred foreign faces that meant nothing.

"Don't touch me."

"Damnit, Kenshin - -"

It could have been one of the woman, who stared at him, beyond Sano, that he'd lashed out at and a woman's bones fractured easier than a man's. That would have been regrettable.

"Don't touch me," he said, softer, the cold creeping in around the edges.

"They're still looking - -" Sano flung an arm.

He turned his back, staring at endless water. Not even a sliver of land yet.

"Leave him alone," he heard Sano say, before he stopped listening.

He stared into water long gone black, even the reflection of stars hidden by cloud cover, only the occasional flicker of reflection from the ships lanterns slithering along the water's surface. He'd stood here all the afternoon, the movement of people like ghosts around him. Sano come and gone. Come and gone again. Saying things - - perhaps sensible things - - reassurances, consolations, urging him to hope for things that any reasonable man knew were fantasy.

Numb throughout. Sometimes not thinking at all, dully surprised when the sun edged down the horizon, the sky all washed in grey. Everything washed in grey. Death was no stranger. Death followed him, preceded him, courted him no matter that he tried to avoid it. For the sake of his soul - - if one believed in such things. For the sake of _kami,_ if one wished to believe in more traditional fabrications. His parents had believed.

His parents, what little he could recall of them - - slivers of memory that formed no cohesive whole - - had been superstitious folk. He remembered wards on the door. Charms against evil. Tales told of this demon or that malicious spirit and what ills they could bring on a boy whose _kami _was stained. A trip, through mud and rain, to the peasant shrine outside their village, to offer what little they had when the sickness had struck.

He remembered the flames when the villagers had burned his house, his parent's bloating bodies within, dead from the sickness, stricken as so many had been by the ill favor of the gods. Because of something they'd done, surely. Some impurity that had stained them, some terrible _tsumi_ that must have warranted so cruel a fate.

He'd believed in the old spirits, in the wives tales until Hiko had wrenched those fears out of him, Hiko Seijuro having no fear of earthly or other earthly beings. Hiko invited the wrath of demons with a vengeance, challenging all and sundry to test _his_ wrath. That utter irreverence, that utter lack of apprehension about the things that dwelled just outside the realm of men - - was a very appealing thing to a boy who had only ever known superstition and fear. So Kenshin had learned at the feet of master Hiko, that tales of the old spirits and the wrath of the gods and the consequences of karma were things that the old and the weak and the poor, and the easily led used to find their way in the world. Excuses to explain away their own failings. Men made their own luck and they lived and died by it.

Only he'd always recalled the whispers of those early years, before Master Hiko. Made the occasional trek to this shrine or that - - if it happened to be on his way - - to try and wash away a little of the stain. Hiko would have laughed at him. But then Hiko didn't harbor a niggling fear in the back of his mind where childhood memories dwelled, of the wrath of vengeful spirits.

Hiko didn't cleave to things that he might regret losing should he fail to intimidate those wailing demons. Nothing but a shack in the mountains, with threadbare mats and a leaking roof. Not even a dog to tempt fate.

Much less a wife and a child. With the blood on his hands - - the copious oceans of blood - - it had only been a matter of time. His fault. His tempting of fate - - when he'd known - - he'd damned well known, that he didn't deserve the relief he had found. This was vengeance upon him. Payment for his sins, taken by something so vast he couldn't even raise a sword against it in retaliation. As if one could retaliate against karma.

He curled his fingers on the rail, forcing images on himself, brutal imaginings of bodies plunged into unforgiving, unfathomable depths. Sinking, sinking, drawn under along with wreckage, huge and heavy and black. A child's pale, cold face, eyes wide and cloudy, small limbs drifting and lax in the void. A wash of black hair, swaying like silk in the current, parting to reveal the soft curve of a woman's cheek.

He shut his eyes, pressing his forehead against the rail, silently screaming through his clenched teeth. Horrified by the imagery, beckoning it in like the glint of a wakizashi towards his gut. Her wide, accusing eyes. Staring at him as she floated, dead pale thing below the waves. _Payment for your sins_. _Your sins, not ours._ _You should have known_. _Selfish. Selfish. You betray me and then you let me die - - the least you could do, is join us - _-

Her voice echoed in his head and he blinked, the cloud of numb that he'd been wallowing in since he'd understood them gone, simply washed away with her sensible solution. The pain rushed in to fill the void. Rocks filling his insides, cold and hard and heavy, lancing through his guts like acid and he screamed again, this time a howl that broke the silence of the ship. He had betrayed her - - betrayed Kenji - - the things that he cherished the most. Betrayed them by inviting death among them in the form of a murderous Englishman. Betrayed them with Sano. Betrayed them by not having the sense to put himself far distant from them - - taking his impurity and the ill fortunes it always seemed to bring upon him well away from them.

Fool. Fool, to have thought differently. He slammed his forehead against the railing, again, that dull pain not even making a dent against the utter agony gripping his insides. Innocent eyes looking up at him - - trusting. Small hand in hers as they walked - - looking back at him, trusting he'd keep them safe. Wetness blurred his vision, and he wasn't sure if it were blood or tears. It hurt. It hurt and he'd have died a thousand times to have avoided this. She was right. It was the least he could do - - the very least - -

Hands grabbed him from behind, jerking him back from the rail and the darkness that had swallowed his world. The rushing of the ocean filled his head, the frenzy of some desperate need to escape, and he fought the hold, growling with animal intensity. Howling with it when he couldn't break the hold that pinned his arms and kept him from free movement. Feet against the edge of the aft deck house and he propelled himself backwards, the body behind him impacting the rail with enough force to shatter wood. He heard a cry of pain, a scrambling for footing that almost allowed him freedom, save the damned long arms refused to loosen their grip - - tightening it if anything - - wrenching the air out of him, wrenching him off his feet and slamming full force into the deckhouse wall.

"You crazy son of a bitch - - you want to kill us both? That what you want?" The voice got through, screaming in his ear. A forehead drove into the back his skull, driving his own into the wood. Vision swam, warm salty wetness seeped inside his mouth. It ran down his face. Blood. It had to be blood. And the sobbing - - he could hear the sobbing echo of ghosts - - too many damned ghosts - - drifting just beyond the range of his vision.

It was a blessing when they drew him down with them into darkness.

Sano let Kenshin fall. Leaning one forearm on the deckhouse wall, twisting the other hand to his back, which blared pain from the damned hard impact against the railing. He looked over his shoulder, at the broken guardrail. They'd come that close to crashing through and getting swallowed up by the sea. Probably with none the wiser, black as the waters were. Or maybe not - - from the footsteps of crewmen roused to alarm by the scuffle.

A few poked their heads around, warily and Sano held up his hands and said in English learned from Pakshi.

"Okay. It's okay."

He didn't know how to explain more. Even if he'd been speaking his own tongue, he wouldn't know how to explain this madness of Kenshin's away. And madness it was. A complete leap off the edge of sanity into whatever morass of grief and guilt that Kenshin had pulled himself into.

The crewmen were staring, wary, and damned if Sano wanted to wait for them to call ships officers to stick their noses into a private matter. He grabbed Kenshin's arm, got him up enough to haul over a shoulder. Sano's back complained, his shin did, and his knee where Kenshin had gotten in good shots. He shouldered his way through them and they let him pass. Maneuvered down the steps to the lower deck and their cabin, and tossed Kenshin into the lower hammock.

His back hit the wall, and he braced himself there, staring at the blood trickling from the corner of Kenshin's mouth, the trail of it from his nose, thinking - - _Idiot. Idiot._ And not being able to get past that. Just pissed and rightfully so, because Kenshin always had gotten stupid in his grief - - but this - -

He let himself slide down and sat there, wetness trickling down his own nose. He wiped a hand and it came away red. His nose throbbed a little, but he'd taken worse hits. A lot worse. He clenched his teeth, clenched his fists to keep from shaking when he thought again how close they'd come to going overboard. Thinking what might have happened if he hadn't been there, keeping vigil. Something in his gut having warned him not to trust Kenshin, who'd been stretched too damned thin for too damned long in this thing to take this sort of blow without breaking one way or another.

And Sano shared the pain. For Kaoru, who'd he'd enjoyed riling - - who he'd been a little envious of - - who'd been a friend. For a kid, that he'd never met, but was Kenshin's - - and that was enough. For Kenshin, who carried around enough guilt and didn't need this one more massive block weighing him down.

Sano hit the floor. A solid rap of knuckles. Again, thinking _how's he gonna get over this?_ Because all that talk he and Pakshi had been spewing about there still being hope - about them still searching so maybe they'd find survivors and maybe a girl and a kid might be among them - - well, that was just somebody refusing to accept reality, days after the fact. Realist that he was, Kenshin had already accepted it.

Sano looked at Kenshin's sword, propped in the corner, thinking the last thing Kenshin needed access to at the moment, when the grief was fresh and his sanity was a little in doubt, was a blade.

Kenshin slept like the dead. Not a groan, not a movement, even when the ship shuddered when she gently edged into dock, hull bumping pier. Sano had to slap him awake, finally, and he felt no compunction against putting a little force behind it, having gotten a glimpse at the damned big bruise on his back and _feeling_ it with every movement.

Sano backed away from the sudden jerk - - the sudden defensive movement of hands as Kenshin snapped back to awareness.

"Up," Sano said, as Kenshin was blinking in disorientation. Sano hoped he had one hell of a headache to match the ache in Sano's back.

Kenshin didn't move, the hammock swaying gently under him, things starting to register behind forced-sleep hazed eyes. He looked up at Sano, one sharp glance, before flicking his gaze away, maybe preparing to plunge back into that morass of self-pity he'd been wallowing in. And Sano was willing to give him ample time to grieve, really he was, but he was damned well going to do it like a sane person.

"We're here," Sano said, planting his fists on his hips. "We've gotta get off the ship. We're going with Pakshi to her house, then she's taking us to the port authority offices to find out what we can about the Eastcourt. Now, if you've got a problem with doing all that like a rational human being, well, I don't have one with knocking your ass back out and hauling you out of here like baggage. And if you think I can't, in this little room with no space for you to move - - think again."

Another flick of the eyes to him. A tightening of the mouth, then Kenshin pushed himself off the hammock. Didn't manage it with anything resembling grace, but then it was hard to gracefully exit a hammock and his head probably was throbbing. Good.

He waited for Sano to move, allowing him a path to the door, then stopped with his hand on it, staring at the corner where the sword had been.

"Where's my sword?" Very softly asked.

"Don't worry about it. Taken care of."

Sano got a profile then, a look from narrowed eyes, before Kenshin lowered his head and hair obscured it. Sano pushed past him, heading for the deck and off this boat. The stench of the docks hit before he even sat foot on deck. The sound of life and activity a buzz in the air before he actually got the vantage to see the sprawling docks. Madras was the central hub for maritime traffic for all of Southern India. The center of operations for the British on this side of the continent. Hundreds of ships and boats and barges weighted down with cargo fought for right way in the harbor. Further down, towards what Pakshi said was the British command post of Fort St. George, military ships rested at dock.

It was early still, only hours after dawn, and the air was already sluggish from encroaching heat. The whole place stank of human sweat - - too damned many people about their business dockside. Sano sauntered down the ramp, after casting a casual glance behind him to make sure Kenshin was trailing him still. Into the crowd of half naked brown bodies. Vendors and dockworkers and those hopeful for day work, westerners here and there among them, administrators or sailors or uniformed soldiers. He saw Pakshi and her niece across the wharf, standing in the company of a middle aged woman and a skinny boy of perhaps ten, at the head of a cart with a very old seeming donkey, piled with their luggage.

"My daughter, Nanda," Pakshi introduced the woman, who eyed Sano, and Kenshin behind him, warily, before inclining her head. "And her son, Rajiv, who is the man of the family."

It took some time to maneuver the little procession through the dockside mob. There were great walls, protecting the city from the port. Very old seeming walls with wind worn carvings that allowed them egress to Madras proper though a towering round portal with raised iron gates.

Once inside, color and sound and smell assaulted them. Hundreds of traveling shops, people set up on blankets, or carrying their wares from their persons, entertainers and acrobats and musicians all trying to coerce a bit of silver. Desperate sounding merchants who screamed at each other in rivalry when not screaming at possible customers to stop and examine their goods. And beggars. Dozens of beggars, beseeching passer by for succor.

If he had not experienced the market streets of Hong Kong, or the poorer, more dangerous slums of Shanghai - - it might have been more overwhelming. As it was, he palmed the very light purse in his pocket to make sure it stayed on his person, and soldiered through. He kept an eye on Kenshin - - fell back to walk a little closer, not wanting to loose him in the press and not sure Kenshin was focused as fully as he might have been on navigating it.

The crowds thinned though, as they departed the harbor district and a body could breath again without inhaling the stench of too many other bodies. Still the crowds were thick, the brown shoulders of young men, the colorful saris of women, all about their business. Still no few beggars, who accosted passer by and most certainly foreign seeming passer by. A trio of mounted English Soldiers in their red jackets and their flat topped black caps, forced back a group of particularly adamant beggars, who closed in on their horses in passing. The rest of the crowd made hasty way for them, wary of skittish horses in their midst.

"The famine," Satya dropped back, walking beside him. "It has driven many into the city, seeking food. And the food comes here in mass, in the belly of cargo ships, but the Company sends it back out, to richer peoples. Sometimes they don't even send it out. I've heard of cargo sitting on the docks - - untouched. But they'd rather let it mold than give to those who cannot pay and starve without."

Sano watched the soldiers in their passage though the crowd. A different sort of military than the British who walked the streets of Colombo. Hardened men, who enforced rule upon a population that so vastly outnumbered them, it was unimaginable.

"You're not crazy about them?"

She shrugged. "Some say the British rule will bring India to a new age. Others - - disagree. Aunt Pakshi says the rule of the Company was worse than the rule of the Empress."

Sano cocked a head, not understanding.

Satya smiled and explained. "Victoria. The queen of the British. They and the maharajas and the powers that be in their wisdom proclaimed her Empress if India when the Governors of the East India Company lost their power to govern. I don't know if ever she's set foot here. I don't care."

Sano grinned back at her. "I sort of think you do. You have opinions."

She arched a brow. "You don't like women with opinions?"

"No, I do. Long as they're not about me."

She laughed and Pakshi's daughter turned a frown back at them. Not approving, Sano thought, this notion of bringing strange men back to their home that her mother had devised.

Pakshi's house was at the end of a residential street lined with closely built houses of some distinction. Several stories tall, made of stone and plaster, with a pair of ornate wooden doors that opened before their little group approached and spilled out a multitude of females. Young and old, plump and thin, all of them in colorful saris and scarves and chattering like a flock of agitated birds.

Sano stopped by Kenshin, who'd snapped out of the fog he'd been walking in to stare with some misgiving at the pack of women.

"These all Pakshi's daughters and nieces?" Sano asked of the boy, Rajiv, who also seemed reluctant to delve into that perfumed mass.

The boy shuffled his feet and nodded.

"Rajiv's Japanese is not so good, but he's learning," Pakshi said, welcoming them into the open courtyard beyond the doors. A second story balcony looked down, protected by gorgeously worked wooden railings. The women skirted in around them, whispering and curious until Pakshi called them to order and introduced them.

"My dears, remember your manners. These are our guests, Sagara Sanosuke and Himura Kenshin. They have come from Japan

And she went about introducing the gathered women. Two more daughters, two nieces, a daughter by marriage, the elderly sister of her late husband, five granddaughters, one great granddaughter who was still in swaddling, and poor lonely Rajiv, alone in a house bursting at the seams with females.

All of them stared with wide-eyed interest, at the two of them, whispering, the way women did among themselves, as if they thought men hadn't the acuity of hearing to realize they were being talked about.

"Ladies," Sano said in English, figuring he'd take the plunge, and walking among them.

The younger ones giggled at that, and gathered around, not demure at all, asking questions he could only barely understand. A press of soft bodies and whispery scarves, and exotic scents that a man couldn't help but find pleasant when he was the center of it.

Kenshin hung back, against the closed doors to the street, as if he were considering bolting, not pleased at all with this press of excited women, hardly knowing what to do with flirting women at the best of times. Pakshi shooed away the few that had abandoned Sano for him and promised coaxingly.

"Allow me to rest my feet, and for us all to quench our thirsts, and then we shall go find out what we can of the ship."

Kenshin did the courteous thing and nodded, but Sano knew him well enough to see the strain. Kenshin holding it together for the sake of appearances, in the company of women to whom he did not wish to shed face. Thank the gods, at least, for the remnants of staunch Samurai pride.

Pakshi had Rajiv show them to the well, inside the courtyard, and the partitioned section beyond it, where they were invited to wash the dust of the road away. The boy led them then to a room, all of three stories up, the only unused room in a house full of women, which looked as if it were primary used now for storage. But there was a breeze, large ornate windows on either wall, the carved shutters of which let through dappled light and air. When the shutters were thrown open there was a view of the sprawling city, with its domes and towers in the distance on the one side, and the Bay of Bengal, sparkling and azure and dotted with ships on the other.

Kenshin sat on the wide ledge staring out at the sea, while Sano prowled the room. There were blankets enough to make a comfortable bed, room to stretch his legs. He went to the window finally and leaned against the opposite sill from Kenshin.

"There might be good news at the harbor master's. Might be survivors they picked up that frigate we passed didn't know about." It was easier to promote optimism than try and find the words adequate for the occasion of losing a wife and child. Sano had never been that good at expressing those deeper things - - easier to avoid them. Easier to let anger and physical action take the place of allowing the world to see emotional weakness. He supposed he was not unlike a great deal of men in that. Uncomfortable with the things that women dealt with daily. Half the women downstairs, that shared Pakshi's house had lost husbands or sons or brothers and they went on.

Kenshin's gaze didn't waver from the Bay. For a while Sano thought he wasn't going to answer at all. Then softly. "Perhaps."

"Gotta hold out hope, right?"

Kenshin's eyes did flick to him them, a somber look, as if Sano were the one that needed solace. And after a moment, he turned his gaze back to the Bay. Clay faced. Not a glimmer of anything resembling emotion in his expression. Cutting himself off. Sano had seen it before. Honestly, he'd rather the raving insanity. That was something he could deal with.

"Sano, could you leave me alone? For a little while?" Very quietly asked. And if he had not had a sane look in his eyes, Sano might have hesitated. As it was, he figured the grieving Kenshin had to do needed a quiet place, with no witnesses.

"I'll come get you when we're ready to leave."

Chapter Twenty-eight

Sano left and it was like relief of pressure that had built and built, held at bay the entire walk here, held rigidly in check while women with faces that were blurred in his memory had clustered, speaking too fast, too loudly to be anything but light and noise.

In this quiet place, in the shadows, with the sounds of a city muted and distant - - with no witnesses - - he choked on a breath - - leaned over his knees on the window seat, chest burning with the raw ache of spiritual pain made physical.

Arguing with Sano about the validity of hope was not a thing he could do and keep any semblance of composure. But he knew - - he knew that luck had swung his way on an edge finer than a sharp blade for far too many times for it to turn his way this one last crucial time. He felt it in his gut.

Images and smells and sounds slid across his memory, one by one, relentless, welcome, devastating. Her voice, her scent, the ghost of her smile or her scowl, of her furrow of concentration when she was intent on getting a stance just so, so as not to embarrass herself in front of students, the curve of her body in the darkness when she shed her robes - -

He dug his fingers into his hair and rocked, wetness winning past the barrier of clenched lids. She made him weep. She made him ache with a pain that pieced him to the core. Kenji thoughts made him want to find a bottle and drown himself in it. Made him welcome that offer of violence Sano had made him when he'd woken this morning - - made him very much wish for painful oblivion to escape the notion of his child dead.

He wasn't sure he wanted to go to the shipping authority and have his fears confirmed. He wasn't sure he wanted to go on period, when he doubted the pain and the grief and the guilt would ever go away.

Hiko would have laughed at him in scorn and called him a coward. Sano would have and cursed him. But he hurt and he was tired and there was a point fighting it became too hard.

The women and damned, there were a lot of them filling the courtyard that seemed the main gathering spot for the extended family, were more somber when Sano came back down. Pakshi and Satya had informed them of the details of the situation, and a multitude of somber, painted eyes turned to him when he shuffled into the courtyard.

The invited him into their midst with a clatter of beckoning, braceleted hands. They had a platter of cut fruit and a pitcher watered down wine on a low table that the majority of them sat around on pillows and strewn cushions. He sank down on a cushion between Satya and a plump girl of similar age. Two or three of them offered him wine simultaneously, and glared at each other afterwards. The old woman, Pakshi's husband's sister, if Sano recalled, poured it herself and Sano hid a grin at the miffed looks exchanged between the younger girls.

"How is he?" Satya asked, leaning forward with the superiority of longer acquaintance.

"Better, once we find out something one way or another." Sano didn't want to discuss Kenshin with them. He didn't want Kenshin a subject for speculation among them, when Kenshin was teetering on the fine edge of losing it.

But women were women, and they spoke among themselves of the tragedy. Of how horrible to die swallowed up by the sea. Of how terrible for a husband to lose a wife and child. But he was certainly young enough to marry again and father many more children. And was Sano married? Tall and fit as he was, he'd father fine sons.

Sano swallowed his goblet of wine and edged it over for the old woman to refill. She gave him a wry look, understanding his need and filled it to the rim.

"Uncle Narasimha left very respectable dowries for his nieces," the plump one, who he thought was called Natun, hinted.

"This is a nice house," Sano veered off that subject uncomfortably. "What did your uncle do?"

"Our father was the second son of the brother of a prince of Oressa." The old woman said. "Family money, even after the British tried to tax it to death. Narasimha had his books and was renowned in all of India for his studies. Even among the English, who consider themselves the only truly educated people. There is a room in this house filled with his books and his scrolls. Pakshi refuses to be rid of them, even though we could use the space."

She waved a hand at a quiet, very pregnant young woman at the edge of the gathering.

Sano slid his gaze across the assembled collection of women. Rajiv had made himself scarce, as well as Pakshi herself. No husbands, no brothers, only the one son. It was an unusual lack of men in a house full of women of marriageable age.

Pakshi descended not long after, in a sari of finer quality than her traveling one.

"Have they been pestering you with their nonsense?" She asked after stopping at a niche with the stone image of a graciously endowed, multi-armed woman and offering respect.

"He's a man," the old woman said, waving a dismissive hand. "What man shrivels under the attention of pretty girls?"

Pakshi gave her a sharp look and Sano got the feeling the two of them, eldest of the household, butted heads frequently.

"Fetch Rajiv from where ever he's off to. I'll need him as escort."

"I'll go," Satya said.

"No." Pakshi said simply and the girl settled back down, pouting.

"So, we ready to go?" Sano asked and the woman nodded.

"Okay. I'll get Kenshin."

The Madras port authority complex was on the north side of Fort St. George, which served as the headquarters for the British government in Madras. There was a concentration of English there, diplomats, soldiers and their families, and the architecture reflected that with a touch of European lines.

It was close to an hour's walk from Pakshi's house, but the afternoon had cooled somewhat, rife with a strong breeze in off the bay and the path she led them on was less congested than the way in from the docks. The streets here were more orderly once they reached the north side, a great deal more white skinned people mingling with the brown. A great many uniformed soldiers, both British and Indian on patrol.

The Port Authority was a sprawling, white washed stone complex that looked as if bits and pieces of it had been added on with different flavors of architecture over the years. There was a congestion of traffic outside, carriages and wagons and tethered horses. People coming and going from various offices, on various errands.

Pakshi, one of the few women in evidence, weeded her way inside, with Rajiv, Sano and Kenshin in her wake. Her sex and the rich cut of her sari afforded her some respect, men making way and doffing caps. There were no few military men in evidence, some in red-coated uniforms, some in sand colored ones. Pakshi found a clerk and made inquiries and was directed to offices in the back. Another clerk took note of her, as they made their way forward, and rose to politely inquire what service he might grant. Their exchange of English was too rapid for Sano to easily follow, so he stood there, next to Kenshin, and watched a cluster of men who were very obviously military outside an office at the end of the hall. There were raised voices within and soon a man of some rank, if the array of decoration on his uniform breast were any indication, came storming out. The lot of milling soldiers outside the office fell into step as he stalked down the hall, passing them with nary a glance.

Rajiv tugged on Sano's sleeve, eyes wide and whispered in his halting Japanese. "It is him. Sir Fletcher."

"Who's he?"

"He commanded the order of the Star of India, the fiercest of regiments. He is second only to Lord Roberts in command of the army in Southern India."

"Seems pissed," Sano observed, watching the retreat of the broad shouldered, balding man in the company of his subordinates.

Pakshi, after a pause while the General passed, was still speaking with the Clerk. After a moment, the man went to the very office Sir Fletcher had stormed out of, and spoke quietly to the occupant. He waved them forward as a harassed looking Englishman stepped out.

"Lady Pakshi," he said and glanced past her to them. She indicated Kenshin and him and spoke in English and Sano picked up words here and there. Kenshin was very still and very quiet, picking up less than Sano, Sano figured. The man offered Pakshi a chair on one side of a cluttered desk. Kenshin refused, standing just inside the door, so Sano stood with him, waiting while Pakshi spoke with the official.

There was nothing in his face, as they spoke, that indicated the good fortune of having found survivors of a shipwreck. Whenever he cast a glance at Kenshin, all he saw was hair shielding his eyes, and a mouth taut with tension. Finally, the man rose and Pakshi did, the former showing her out with a hand hovering at the small of her back. Inclining his head respectfully at her, and casting them all sad, tired looks, before he retreated back into his office.

"What did he say?" Sano asked, before the door had even closed.

She didn't answer, moving through the press of people, scarves swaying. Finally, when they'd breached the doors and stood on the wide stone steps outside, she turned and tried to take Kenshin's hand in hers.

He refused to let her, backing a half step away and asking simply. "Tell me what he said, Pakshi San."

"They have found no survivors. The Eastcourt went down far enough from land that they hold little hope for finding any. The Company has called off its search and the only reason that the British navy still carries out its own search is that General Fletcher had a son on board the Eastcourt and has great influence with the admiral of the British fleet here in Madras. But soon, they too will stop their patrols. I am sorry."

"Thank you, Pakshi San," Kenshin said quietly.

"Wait, but there's always a chance, right?" Sano said. "You hear of sailors or fishermen whose ships went down in storms floating around on debris for days until somebody finds them."

"Such things do happen," she agreed, but she sounded less than hopeful. "They will carry word to you at my residence if anything is discovered.

It was easy enough to slip away. Even from Sano who kept casting him worried looks, but was willing enough to give him the space that he so badly wanted. Simple to fall back, as they walked, Sano distracted by something on the street, and melt into the crowd of a bisecting road.

Towards the bay and the dock street that ran adjacent. Through those crowds that he barely registered, until the docks became fewer and more dilapidated, and finally the wharfs gave way to stone jetties and eventually to sand beaches. The docks were far and away, the forest of masts grey in the distance. The outline of the city was as well, its profile foreign and strange from the rooftops of Japan he was used to. The sounds of it were muted by the crash of waves.

There was nothing here but fishing shacks and trees shielding a dirt road leading towards the city outskirts, where the occasional person walked, baskets or bundles perched on their shoulders, or balanced on their heads. There was the shrill laughter of a group of boys, playing tag with the surf. Further down a pair of fishermen hauled in a wide expanse of net. Kenshin stopped on the beach staring out into the water at the darkening vista of the horizon. Afternoon coming to a close and he wasn't sure where the day had gone. It seemed only hours ago that Sano had woken him on the ship.

The boys screamed in delight down the beach, having found some spidery crab and tossing it among themselves. He thought he saw a smaller one out in the waves, past the white crashing surf. Bobbing in the current, face small and round and paler than these Indian boys. Familiar. He shaded his eyes against a sun close to the horizon, trying to make out that small shape. He was in the water before he realized he'd been moving that way, fighting his way through waves that wanted to knock him off his feet, looking for that small dark head, but the swells kept hiding it from him.

A surging whitecap knocked him off his feet and he went under, struggling up desperately seeking that vision. But it eluded him. All he could see was foam and the occasional gull riding the waves that inexplicably pushed him back towards shore. He sat on wet sand once he'd reached it, the froth rushing up and dragging the earth out from under him with each pass. Dug his hands into the sand helplessly and stared into the face of the uncaring sea. _There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could do._ The thought kept repeating itself in his head, again and again. Sometimes in her voice. Her tones of accusation. _Useless._ Everything he was - - all his skills, all the experience in the world at the sorts of things he'd been brought up to deal with - - useless to them. He'd as well grown up that superstitious, ignorant peasant farmer as a swordsman of notorious repute for all the help he'd been them. That farmer might still have a family, safe and poor and working their fingers till they bled in someone else's fields. But alive. _At least we'd be alive._

Nothing he was had made any difference for them and he knew what he had to do. He rose, an odd, faint numb in his extremities. An odd muffled numb padding his senses. He'd wondered far from Pakshi's house, but he knew the way back. Stone sober, he could find his way back to any path he'd previously tread.

It was dark by the time he reached Pakshi's house. Her street was filled with the smells of supper cooking, of grilled meats and spices. A wealthy street to boast such scents. He stood outside the door and listened for Sano's presence. Heard his voice, finally, amidst the voices of women, likely in the courtyard. Not this way in, then if he wanted to avoid confrontation. There was an alley between houses and he navigated that, a neat stone path, well tended, that led to a walled enclosure where chickens rustled quietly in the growing shadows. The gate was latched, but up and over was not a hindrance for him. He hesitated at the top of the wall, and instead of dropping to the yard below, leapt to the open sill of a window on the second floor.

He crept through a darkened room that smelled of perfumes and spices, with silks over the arms of a chair and womanly things scattered on a vanity with a small, scuffed mirror. It did not smell of Pakshi's scent, so he moved on, silently moving out onto the railed deck that overlooked the courtyard. A large yard, with a fruit baring tree, and a fountain, and a large stone pit which a fire crackled in merrily, roasting skewers of something, while women sat on the edge, keeping charge of the cooking. He saw Sano sitting cross legged under the fruit tree, several of the young women not charged with the cooking, gathered around him. Sano looked less than pleased with their chatter, a scowl on his face, his mouth tight. Not so much annoyed with his feminine hosts, Kenshin thought, as with him. Sano would be upset and angry.

Pakshi was not below though, and he moved on, quiet as Cat on the prowl, until he found a room with a presence within. He knocked once, softly on the door, before slipping in. She looked up in surprise at him, her hands stalled in the process of twining her long hair.

"Forgive me, Pakshi san, for the intrusion. But I need my sword."

She stared at him, large dark eyes, a woman that had without doubt been a beauty of her generation in her youth. Carefully she laid her hair, unbound, across her shoulders and nodded. Rose, and went to a large trunk just inside her door. Inside, atop folded clothes and cloth and the packages a woman might buy to take home with her on the completion of a long journey, lay his sakabatou. She retrieved it and offered it to him upon her open palms.

"He was afraid for you when he gave it to me for safekeeping."

Kenshin closed his fists around the sheath, meeting her eyes for a long silent moment. Not entirely remembering what had happened that night on the ship after he'd learned of the sinking of Kaoru's boat. Perhaps he had given Sano reason to doubt.

"Thank you - - for everything. Thank you for taking care of him - -" he broke off, not sure what it was he needed to ask of her. Too many things battling for dominance in his head. He couldn't shake the vision of Kenji bobbing in the waves - -or the sound of Kaoru's voice in his head.

He backed away, leaving her the way he'd come, heard her call out, but ignored her. Down that walk like a shadow and out the window to the garden gate.

No meandering slow journey this time, sure of his path as he was, back to the outskirts of the city and the beach. Full night now, the moon risen high and casting wan blue light upon the world. The dark shielded him and the weapon he carried from late night travelers that he passed. Held close to his body, even the night watch were none he wiser.

The beach was deserted when he returned to it. Fishermen returned to their homes, nets neatly stacked far enough up the beach that the tides could not reach them. Even the gulls had left, retreated to wherever it was that they nested for night. The only life was the small, skittering crabs that rushed in with the tide, scampering across wet sand, before the returning water pulled them back out. There was a twine ball, lodged in the sand, the toy of some child left behind when he returned home, safe and sound to the arms of his mother.

He drew in a shuddery breath, vision wavering on that abandoned toy. Kenji had had such a ball, that he used to play with Cat, the one game Cat lowered herself to engage in, the stalking of that tossed ball. He could hear Kenji's laughter, delighted by so simple a thing as a cat pouncing on a ball.

He could hear it now, a whisper amidst the crashing of the waves. A fleeting shimmer of white in the corner of his vision and he thought he saw a figure standing out in the waves. A woman in a pale, drenched kimono. Dark hair streaming across her face.

_What good is that? _She whispered and he clenched his fist around the sheath of the sword. _Look where you and your ideals got us._

The waves crashed against her back, but she remained unmoved, the only wavering of her form from the water filling his eyes. He saw, hiding half behind her, a small figure, clinging to the back of her kimono.

"Forgive me," he whispered, thigh deep in the surf, and flung the sword out into the water. It was swallowed up, beyond where she waited, with barely a splash.

"What are you doing?" The question came in the form of a bellow and not in her tones. H glanced away from her, to a figure stomping down the beach. Sano, trudging through the sand along the trail of his own footprints.

"Go away," he yelled back, Sano part of the problem. Sano one of his sins against her.

"The hell - -" Sano stalked down the beach towards him, maybe having followed him all the way from Pakshi's house, alerted by that lady.

When Kenshin looked back for Kaoru, she was gone, flitted away in the white caps. He drew a desperate breath, furious at Sano for following him, for interfering, for chasing her away.

"Damn you! I don't want you here - -" He screamed it at Sano, shoving him backwards when Sano splashed into the water. "She was there - -they were there - -"

He flung an arm out towards the vastness of the ocean, where nothing but moonlight glinted now, nothing but vast darkness broken by the pale lines of whitecaps rolling towards the beach. Sano stared in confusion at the water, then back at him.

"You threw your sword away." _That_ was Sano's concern.

"What good did it do them?" He backed away, deeper into the water and a wave crashed against his back, staggering him. "She blames me. I see it in her eyes."

"She - -? Who? _Kaoru?_ Have you lost your damned mind? Get out of the water."

Sano made a grab for him and Kenshin hissed, evading him, but not the wave that crashed into his back, the solid sand under his feet one moment and nothing the next, turbulent water sucking him under. His back scraped bottom, salt water invaded his ears, his nose, his throat. Burning. He lost his sense of direction for a moment, no notion where surface was. Panicked. Every instinct he had screaming to fight for the surface - - even though part of him said, don't - -this is what they felt. Take the path they did and let the scales balance.

But when his feet found sandy bottom his body followed instinct and he launched himself up, spitting water and gasping for breath, considerably further out than he'd been when he'd gone under. Sano was a dark shake a dozen yards further down, desperately searching the water. Sano saw him and cursed, hair clinging to his face in dark streaming strands.

Kenshin tread water, the bottom out of his reach. There was nothing here but waves and beach and Sano. No ghostly wives. No ghostly children. The waves carried him closer to the beach and he didn't fight it. Sand under his feet again and he staggered towards shore. Sano fought his way through the waves, angling towards him. Kenshin had lost a sandal along the way. Sano still had both of his.

"She's gone, Kenshin," Sano barked at him, jaw clenched, fists clenched. "And I'm sorry- - I'm truly, truly sorry - - but she's not blaming anybody for anything anymore. And even if you weren't fucking losing it and seeing her ghost - - well her ghost would be a damned bitch if she's blaming you for any of this."

"Shut up," Kenshin cried, indignant, wailing rage blackening the edges of his vision. He hit Sano, and Sano staggered a pace back, raising a hand to his mouth. Looked at the blood on his fingers and pulled back his lips in a red rimmed grin.

"Yeah - - okay - -" he swung back and Kenshin didn't even try to avoid it.

Sano probably pulled the punch - - and it still knocked Kenshin back onto the sand. He lay there, both hands over his eyes, blood in his mouth, jaw throbbing. World reeling, and it wasn't from the blow. He could take a decent blow.

He felt the shifting of sand as Sano knelt next to him. Not touching. Just a presence.

"What do you want, Kenshin," Sano asked hoarsely. "You wanna die and join them? That what she's asking you to do? That what you want? "

"Yes," he said through clenched teeth. Then, with sinking despair. "No." Because he didn't - - not deep down where the center of him was. And maybe that was the worst betrayal of all.

"Whatever you think you're seeing - - hearing. It's not her." Sano said. "I know the twit - - and the last thing she'd ever want was you dead. She loved you, idiot."

Loved. Past tense. Sano had admitted it finally - - given up on his pretense of hope. It was a blow of sorts that he hadn't expected.

"He was three years old, Sano. He was only three - -" Everything was a blur. His throat so thick he could barely get the words out.

"I know - -I'm sorry - -" Sano did lay hands on him then, hauling him up roughly, wrapping long arms around him. Kenshin balled a fist in Sano's wet shirt, pressed his forehead against his shoulder and sobbed.

Sano swallowed blood and a little bit of sand and knelt there while Kenshin let out his grief. Other than that craziness on the ship, it was too long coming. Craziness tonight, too, with Kenshin claiming to see ghosts. He cast a wary look at the ocean, having a healthy respect for the things in the shadows and ghosts in particular - - the shades of Buddhist monks haunting their dilapidated shrine had cemented that, thank you - - and he half expected to see something hovering out there.

But there was nothing but waves, and the occasional glimmering white cap, that he supposed someone crazy with grief might in their gnarled, fevered imagination think to be a figure drifting in the water. And he believed what he'd told Kenshin. If Kaoru ever came back to haunt him as a spirit, she'd be a benevolent one, not some accusing shade pushing him towards whatever it was Kenshin had been trying to convince himself of. She'd spent the entirety of the time he'd known her damned and determined to convince Kenshin that he wasn't the monster he thought past deeds had made him.

Of course that didn't mean Kenshin wasn't seeing some sort of kappa, out to cause mischief. Water spirits were notorious for sensing weakness and exploiting it. And Gods knew, Kenshin had enough vulnerabilities now to fall prey to it.

Sano drew his brows, wishing they were further up the beach, out of the edge of the tide and things that held power in it. But he'd brave the ill intentions of water spirits if he had to, to let Kenshin get this out. Sano had lost a person or two in his life and all holding back the grief got you was messed up. You screamed, you cried, you beat the shit out of something if you had to, but you let out. Didn't mean you didn't carry it with you forever, one way or another - - but at least it got you through the day. And the next. And the next.

Kenshin wrung himself dry eventually, limp against Sano for a while after, until he stiffened a little, maybe embarrassed at the show of weakness, and pushed himself away. His hair, come loose from its tail in the waves, was a sodden, sand crusted mess clinging to face and shoulders.

"So - -" Sano had no idea what to say. So he pushed himself up, reached down and caught Kenshin's arm, hauling him up whether he wanted up or not and got them further up the beach where the sand was soft and dry, out of the domain of anything possibly out there lurking in the water. He collapsed back down then, and after a moment, Kenshin did beside him, barefoot and hollow eyed.

"You lost your sandal." Stating the obvious seemed safe enough. Sano was almost afraid to mention the sword, lost out there in the water. Gods knew what Kenshin had been thinking doing that - - but if Sano were any judge it had been some guilt-ridden attempt to punish himself. He'd regret it, Sano figured, sooner or later.

For a long time they sat there in silence, watching the waves, the slow migration of the moon, the distant silhouette of some ship sailing towards Madras harbor.

"It hurts," Kenshin whispered, barely audible.

"Yeah."

Kenshin dropped his head, tangling his fingers in his hair and didn't say more.

By the time it started misting, the moon was far behind them and the horizon over the bay turning purple and red with the onset of sunrise. Sano figured they'd sat out here long enough, clothes gone dry becoming damp again with early morning showers.

"C'mon," he pushed himself to his feet and held out a hand for Kenshin. After a moment, Kenshin accepted it and let Sano pull him to his feet. It would be a long walk back in the rain to Pakshi's and he hoped they still had a place in her home after all the drama. A smart woman, with a family of her own to look after, might well rescind her offer to houseguests not acting entirely within their right minds.

He got as far as the jetties and the houses at the outskirts of the city, before he lost his way entirely, standing in indecision at an unfamiliar cross road. He hadn't been paying a great deal of attention to his surroundings when he'd been scrambling to keep on Kenshin's trail out here. He'd barely caught sight of him at the end of Pakshi's street after she'd alerted him of Kenshin's coming and going with that sword.

Kenshin took the lead then, silently, taking the path Sano would not have chosen, if it had been left to his devices. Leading them a meandering way through grey, mostly deserted city streets in the hours before true dawn, towards Pakshi's house.

Almost he was embarrassed to knock on her door, at this hour, but he was tired and wet again and manners had never figured greatly into Sano's decision making. So he pounded a fist against the doors, while Kenshin stood mutely behind him. She answered it herself, after a few minutes, wrapped in a long robe, with her hair in a long braid across her shoulder.

Kenshin bowed deeply to her, without quite looking her in the eye. "I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, Pakshi San."

She looked more relieved than irritated, Sano thought. "What is life without its inconveniences?" she said. "I rise before the girls, regardless. I was awake."

She ushered them in, out of the rain. The courtyard was glistening with it, water running across the flagstones to a central drain. "If you wish to avoid answering questions from the girls, go upstairs now, though. You'll find dry clothing in the big blue trunk - - my husband's - - my son's - - that should make due. Go, before they rouse."

There was very wan light seeping through the inner shutters in the attic. Just enough to see by without lighting a candle. Sano found the trunk, filled with men's clothing. The belongings of Pakshi's dead. He found he wasn't picky, very much tired of wet cloth against his skin. The clothing, size wise was more suited for Kenshin - - Pakshi's men having been of average size and height, but they were loose enough to fit, even if they were short in the arm and leg. Even the plain ones were of a very fine, very soft fabric, with fine embroidery along the edges.

It had been a very long time since Sano had slept, none since the night before he'd sat vigil on Kenshin on the ship. He felt it now, that seeping exhaustion. He fell into the pile of blankets he'd tossed against a wall, trusting this time, that he could leave Kenshin to his own devices. He was asleep before he'd fully nestled down into his pallet, the sound of the rain on the roof a quiet serenade.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Twenty-six

Saitou had brought clothing back, when he'd returned the first time with the food. Kenshin was not certain if it were consideration on his part, or if he simply didn't want his own escape possibly hindered by Kenshin wondering about the dockside, attracting attention in bloody, torn clothing. Rather, he suspected the latter. Saitou's courtesies tended towards the practical.

Still, it was appreciated, shedding blood crusted trousers and donning the clean, loose native clothing Saitou had appropriated. He might have preferred his own clothing, setting out yet one more time after Kaoru, but that was lost to him, in the inn where they dared not return. So he belted on soft brown trousers, and a coat not unlike a hanten, over his shirt that was long enough to hide the sakabatou. Ever practical, Saitou. He'd even brought sandals.

Sano had seen to his wounds. Sano had tended them with that gentle, competent touch that had surprised Kenshin since the mountains, but still, he stopped Kenshin when he was changing shirts, a hand on his shoulder where one of the dogs had gotten a tooth hold.

"This is your sword arm. You gonna have a problem if we run into trouble?" Sano's hand lingered, palm cool against the fevered skin around the bite. It was sore, a little stiff, but he'd battled through worse.

"No."

Sano nodded, sliding his hand to Kenshin's neck, under the hair he'd refastened into a tail, and Kenshin thought the question a pretense. Sano's insecurities were understandable - - Kenshin shared them - - but he hadn't the time or the patience to deal with them at the moment. Not when he wanted very badly to find the ship Saitou had procured for them, sooner rather than later, in the case they did run into that trouble Sano had suggested. But Sano didn't say anything more, just sighed and laid his forehead against Kenshin's, big hand on his neck. A surprising act of quiet commiseration that made Kenshin draw breath, off balance, not having expected it.

Then Sano drew away, embarrassed maybe, that evasive look in his eyes that hinted at it, at least, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Okay. You wanna get out of here, then?"

Kenshin nodded, crossing the lapels of the shirt and belting it, slipping the sword through that and donning the jacket loose to hide it. He would not go weaponless again, regardless of the local authorities disapproval. If he had to take up the argument physically, so be it. He had no intention of being here for longer than it took to board that ship and leave Ceylon behind him.

Sano snuffed out the candle and followed him out into the darkness. Hours yet till dawn and the sky was inky with cloud cover that spilled a steady, driving rain. No moon, no stars, but even with the lost time and disorientation he'd suffered, Kenshin's internal clock tended towards accuracy.

Sano didn't second guess Kenshin's sense of direction this time, following along, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his own native jacket, eyeing the dark alleys and the places possible danger might lie concealed. On edge as much as Kenshin. But the streets were quiet, abandoned in the hours of pre-dawn, the rain driving even the most relentless late reveler or diligent authority inside.

There were lights along the harbor though. Lanterns flickering weakly against stormy darkness. Always there were men awake and aware at the harbor, keeping ship's time, which was ruled by tides instead of night and day.

The port of Kolomtoa was one long stretch of boardwalk and docks, none of them labeled for the uninformed. Kenshin had no idea if a Dutch Schooner differed from a British one or an American one and comprehending foreign names painted on the bows of no few ships was beyond him. A daunting task, finding a particular ship, when the masts sprang like a vast, barren forest for what seemed miles of harbor. When only a portion of them were moored along the pier, a great many anchored in the bay, traveled to and from in small boats that even now dotted the water.

There was nothing to do but ask, which Sano did, having a greater grasp of the native language than Kenshin. Sano, like Kenji, had a knack for picking up foreign words and retaining them. Though he'd scoffed at Saitou's offer to teach on the voyage here, Sano having little patience for lessons that did not involve fighting techniques or sport, he'd picked up casual words easier than Kenshin. Sano claimed to be fairly adept with at least two Chinese dialects that he'd picked up during his travels on the mainland.

They were directed far, far down the harbor, by an inebriated old dockhand. A miserable walk, drenched and frustrated by the time they reached a stretch of docks where a round eyed sailor pointed when Sano spoke the name of the ship they were seeking and they saw a schooner three berths down with a modicum of activity. Men hunched under canvas coats in the rain, loading the last of provisions and cargo onto a fat bellied schooner with a much chipped, weather worn, golden haired mermaid gracing her bow.

"About damned time," Sano muttered, heading that way.

Kenshin started after him, then hesitated, something making the skin on the back of his arms prickle. He caught the edge of Sano's jacket, stalling his progress. Staring with intent into the shadows along the warehouse side of the dock, even as Sano paused, glancing back in question. He saw a glint of something. The almost imperceptible flicker of movement in the shadow of an alleyway.

Sano gave him a look, questioning and Kenshin flicked his eyes that direction, a subtle warning. Sano narrowed his own, glancing that way, but there was nothing now. Sano kept moving, casual saunter, that Kenshin followed, arms folded across his middle inside the jacket, fingers grazing the hilt of the sword.

The stone at Sano's feet spat up, simultaneous with the crack of gunfire. Sano yelped, dancing back, even as Kenshin looked for the source of the fire and found it as light flared from the muzzle of a gun on the roof of a building ahead of them. Sano was cursing, flinching as another shot hit too close, running for the closest shelter of an open doorway of a darkened warehouse with Kenshin on his heels.

Darker inside than out. The smell of tea battled with the stale smell of mold and dust, bales upon bales of dried leaves stacked within. There were the sound of footsteps pounding towards them, the tell tale clatter that he'd come to be familiar with from English soldiers when they ran. He did not wish a fight with them on the docks, within view of a ship he wanted badly to board. Why they were waiting for them here and now was in question though. Had they known they were coming, or simply posted at the docks, waiting to for them to attempt to escape?

He urged Sano deeper into the darkness, through the corridor made by bales of tea, even as men entered the warehouse in their wake. Turned down a maze made by bales and barrels and crates, and came to wide aisle where there was a light square of grey towards the far end. A back entrance leading out into stormy pre-dawn. That way then, towards avoiding this conflict and working their way around to the Gravenhage, slipping aboard unannounced if need be, in efforts to be on her when she sailed.

A man lunged out of the dark at them from between bales, wielding a knife, hard to see in the dark. Sano smashed a fist in his face before he could jab at him with it, and the man tumbled backwards into a bale. But he was only the first. Others scurried out like rats from the darkness, blocking the way out.

Natives mostly, with knives and clubs, but English soldiers mixed in. But not the usual spotlessly uniformed ones that usually patrolled the city. Collars loosened, jackets rumpled as if they'd spent hours at ease or, from the faint smell of alcohol, hours at a tavern, before they'd come here. It made sense. Winter had no official power here, but he'd claimed to have no few of his countrymen in his pocket. Off duty soldiers doing favors then, like the ones that had apprehended Kenshin at the park.

Kenshin stopped next to Sano, fingertips on his arm, a quiet warning to think before he jumped into a fray that involved no few guns. A few of them held lanterns, a stuttering light that cast more shadows that they chased away. But it would give them the light to aim by.

"The carrying of weapons is not permitted," one of the soldiers barked, rifle held at ready. Kenshin shifted his stance somewhat, giving them his side, not relaxing his hand on the hilt of his sword. Eyes traveling among them until he settled on a figure moving in from the darkness at one side. A bruised, sorry seeming man with darkened eyes and a bandage covering one side of his face.

Winter. Who had survived after all and stood there, between two of the English, a revolver in his hand, that he brought up, pointing directly at Kenshin.

"I should have listened to Jun's advice and killed you first chance I had."

Kenshin said nothing. Didn't move. Just stood there meeting Winter's gaze.

"I want those papers back, damn you," Winter snapped.

"I don't have them," Kenshin said softly.

Winter laughed, and there was the faintest trace of desperation amidst the bravado. A man that had risked much and lost much in the process. A man with very little more to lose but pride and his chance at vengeance. Sano's viper, waiting for his moment to strike.

"Did you think," Winter hissed. "I wouldn't know when passage was booked on the first ship out of port on the trail of your little girl?"

Kenshin's thumb caressed the tsuba of his blade, not quite enough pressure to slide the sword from the mouth of the scabbard.

"So, this is the bastard who caused all the trouble?" Sano casually inquired, giving Winter the once over.

Winter's eyes flicked to him. Others did, a shifting of nervous men.

"Looks like you kicked his ass right good," Sano remarked.

Winter's eyes narrowed and Kenshin saw the faint tensing as his finger tightened on the trigger. He moved before the retort of the gun echoed in the cavernous chamber, sword drawn so fast that sparks spit from the metal clearing the sheath. No thought involved, simply instinct that directed the blade and he felt the impact of bullet glancing off metal, a tinge in the tight scar tissue on his palm. He stood there, half in front of Sano, who the bullet had been meant for, glaring narrow eyed at Winter.

"Shit," Sano said, after the fact.

Winter blinked at him. No few of them did, scrambling to readjust weapons, the British glowering, trying stubbornly to seem unimpressed, the natives casting nervous looks amongst themselves.

Sano could hold his own against them, thugs with clubs and knives, given the chance, but guns were a whole different matter. There were only so many bullets that Kenshin could keep track of, before they cut one or the other of them down. The light was a problem. Men needed light to aim by, and there were two lanterns providing that.

"Kill them both, " Winter made a short, frustrated wave and Kenshin moved. Had to hope Sano did, as gunfire exploded, echoes of it reverberating through the warehouse.

He darted in, low, fast, feeling the blood rushing in his veins, the thud of his heart, the smooth leather of the hilt in his hand. He shattered the barrel of a gun before the second shot rang out. Knocked out the first lantern, and the man holding it. Delved into the mass of them, focused on nothing but the blade and the almost slow motion movements of the bodies around him. Took out the second lantern and this one shattered, the flames guttering on the ground. It needed a body to extinguish them. He provided it, toppling a native with a Billy club.

Darkness now, the warehouse plunged back into shadows. A few shots still ringing out, men yelling, and he couldn't spare a moment to discover if Sano were in the midst of it. Had to figure Sano was, Sano having a tendency to wade into danger instead of away from it. Sano would have to take care for himself, Kenshin could not allow himself to be distracted by it. His distraction, his weak spots for the things that mattered to him was how Winter kept getting the upper hand. And he had his own weaknesses to contend with, old wounds half healed and new ones reminding him very avidly of their existence.

He propelled himself over the back of the man he'd just dispatched, feeling the buzz of a bullet that whizzed past his head, lucky coincidence, and took a man with a rifle down. Came down and spun low, cutting the legs out from under another. Anything but the sakabatou would have hamstrung a man. Anything but the sakabatou would have left a trail of death in his wake.

Men cried out, scuffling, disoriented, the sounds of conflict that wasn't centered on him, letting him know Sano was holding his own. Kenshin crouched for a moment, half kneeling on the man he'd most recently downed, finding his bearing in the darkness. He took half a breath more to flex his hand around the hilt. He could ignore the pain, but he could not afford for a hand not entirely whole, to cost him his grip.

He saw the silhouette of a man in the doorway. Jammed the hilt of his sword into the gut of one staggering towards him from behind. Cut down another few unlucky enough to get in his way and took off after Winter.

Winter, half turned, fired at him as he ran out into the jumbled alley behind the warehouse. Kenshin dodged to the side, lunged in low and Winter fired again, not even aiming for him this time, aiming behind him. He heard a curse that sounded like Sano, ignored his own sense of self-preservation and looked back, seeing Sano clutching his side, back against the edge of the warehouse door.

Kenshin hissed air through his teeth and spun back and found himself facing the muzzle of Winter's gun. Too familiar a position. He froze, staring past that dark bole to Winter's eyes.

"You son of a bitch," Winter snarled at him, a furious man. A desperate one. "You've destroyed my prospects twice over. If you think I won't find your woman and your brat after I put a bullet through your brain and do the same to them, you're naïve."

He squeezed the trigger, but his finger lost strength even as his mouth opened, gaping, eyes shocked wide, looking down at the blade in his gut. A killing blow that angled up towards his heart. The same sort of blow that had killed Erizowa's daughter.

"You - -" Winter gasped on the last of his breath, then toppled, sliding off Kenshin's blade.

Kenshin stood there, staring, thinking he should feel something more than he did. When he'd killed the man at Winter's mansion it had been unintended - - a desperate reflex action and he'd regretted it. This - - he'd known exactly what it was he was about and gone about it with clean, quick efficiency. His vow truly thrown to the four winds and he couldn't - - at that moment - - work up the emotion to care.

The rain was washing the blood off his blade, turning it pink and translucent.

Blood.

Sano. He spun, numb washed away like the blood, as he recalled Sano hit. The look of surprise on his face. But Sano was still on his feet, back against the warehouse door, one hand inside his jacket against his side, but looking less than mortally wounded.

"Sano?" Kenshin moved towards him, blade still naked in his hand. There were bodies in the warehouse that were groaning, painfully trying to push themselves up.

"Winged me," Sano said, trying for a grin, but wincing instead. Kenshin swallowed, not believing him, reaching out with his free hand and lifting Sano's jacket. Sano moved his hand so Kenshin could see. A gouge above Sano's hip, bleeding profusely, but not deep.

He looked up, meeting Sano's dark eyes. Worried eyes.

"You okay?" Sano asked.

Kenshin was not aware that he'd taken wounds. But then, he didn't think that was what Sano had meant. He shook his head, finding that he could not, at the moment, speak of it. He thought Kaoru would be terribly disappointed in him. All her faith shattered. She might not look at him the same again and she might have the right, because all it took to invite the stain back in was the blood at the end of a blade. He'd spent years convincing himself of just that, after all.

Sano's fingers caught his jaw, and he blinked, surprised, into Sano's eyes again. "Remember. Snake. Head. You did what needed doing. Don't forget it."

Sano wasn't sure Kenshin believed him. Despite the grim look on Kenshin's face, there was something hollow in his eyes. Guilt, self-recrimination - - who the hell knew what was going through his head with his sword fresh from gutting the son of a bitch who lay in a wet heap in the mud beyond them. The rest of the bastards were certainly alive, some of them struggling back to painful consciousness even now.

Sano pushed himself off the wall and put an elbow into the face of a man that had staggered out from the shadows of the warehouse, and Kenshin blinked, having missed the movement entirely, which just boded damned ill if Kenshin's attention was that badly shot. Kenshin didn't miss things. Not even the little stuff.

Sano caught Kenshin's arm, getting them moving, ignoring the sting of the bullet graze in his side. Hard to tell if it were blood or rain dribbling down his hip, but he didn't have the luxury to stop and find out. Kenshin shook off whatever had been stalling him, and sheathed the sword, picking his way behind Sano through the narrow little passage between this warehouse and the next. Garbage littered and treacherous, it was as quick a way back out to the pier as they had available to them.

Onto the dockside street and other than a sailor at the rail of the closest ship at berth staring with sluggish interest in the direction of the warehouse, their little scuffle, gunshots and all, had caused no one to spill out into the streets to find out the source of the commotion. Sano figured anyone sleeping it off on this street, was probably too drunk for a little late night or early morning brawl to disturb them.

Kenshin slipped warily past him though, hand on the sheath of his sword, moving that way he did when he was on the prowl, that perfectly lethal grace that he moved with when he wasn't trying to hide it and make the world think he was something less than what he was.

Sano was less cautious and strode out, staring up at the rooftops, figuring if there was somebody still up there willing to shoot at them, they might as well get it over with. But no shots came. Nobody came pursuing them at all, the hired thugs probably running soon as they realized their payroll was dead, and English soldiers more than likely not wanting to have to explain how they'd come to be embroiled in this to begin with. But that wouldn't last. Somebody would grow balls and report it to somebody not in Winter's pocket. So he and Kenshin needed to be safely out of here before the law descended.

Their ship was a couple of berths down, maybe far enough for the men scrambling around deck not to have noticed the scuffle down the street. Maybe not, because a big, pale haired guy with a glower and wicked boat hook in hand, barred their way before they even got the end of the boarding ramp.

"Gravenhage?" Sano pointed to the ship.

The guy nodded warily and Sano gave him his best, least threatening smile and said in Ceylonese. "We've got passage booked."

The guy stared at them dubiously, stared down at the hilt of Kenshin's sword and damned if Kenshin didn't have an expression on his face that might have given any sane man pause. So Sano sort of shouldered in front of him, amazed that he was the one having to put on the harmless, negotiators face, and repeated, slower, in case he'd spoken it wrong, or the guy didn't understand the language any better than he did.

"Sagara." He indicated himself, then jerked a thumb back at Kenshin. "Himura. Guy booked us passage yesterday."

The sailor frowned, then barked something over his shoulder, and another darker fellow came to the end of the ramp and looked down and said something back. Completely incomprehensible language. It didn't even sound like English.

Then, the dark one said in heavily accented Japanese. "You late. Another few minutes - - left without you."

He beckoned and they edged past the boathook and up the ramp.

"No baggage?" The dark one asked.

"Traveling light." Sano shrugged.

The sailor motioned them to follow as if he had better things to do, and led them to the hatch leading below decks. "Cabin this way."

They passed the open door of another cabin, where a matronly woman in a sari and a girl looked up at their passage, then down to the end of the corridor to a room little larger than a closet with two hammocks on hooks, one above the other, neither one long enough, Sano thought, to accommodate his length. Figures Saitou would book them the cheapest berth possible.

He leaned against the door while the sailor left, wondering if they'd get breakfast, while Kenshin stood half in the room, staring blindly at the dusty corner. Reliving things inside his head, Sano figured. Second guessing himself maybe. Thinking up ways to ramp up that guilt he liked to carry around. Idiot.

Sano lifted his jacket finally, looking down at the finger thick furrow in his side. It was still bleeding, soaking into the waist of his trousers.

"Sano," Kenshin finally swung his attention back to reality, and stared with concern at the wound.

Sano shrugged. "No big deal."

"We need to stop the bleeding." Kenshin looked around for something to accomplish that. There were wool blankets inside the unstrung hammocks, but damned if Sano wanted scratchy wool against a fresh wound. He was ready to tear a few strips off the hem of his jacket when there was a soft feminine gasp and the older woman from down the hall stopped in the passage and stared with dark, black rimmed eyes at his bleeding side.

"It's okay -" he started, figuring she'd freak out and maybe call one of the crew and the last thing they needed was trouble before the ship was out of dock. But she only called something to the girl, who stuck her head out their cabin door, then swept past Kenshin who was standing there dripping, and not doing much of anything useful, and took charge like a woman who was used to men who didn't have the sense to care for their own needs.

"How long has this been bleeding? Come, come," she urged him out of the doorway and down the hall towards her cabin. He gave Kenshin a bemused look in passing and let her pull him that way. He half saw Kenshin slide the sheathed sword out of his belt and set it inside their own small cabin, before he drifted after, standing in the corridor outside the door while the girl gave the woman strips of cloth to clean the wound, then opened a box filled with little jars.

The woman spoke excellent Japanese, though she was Hindu if Sano were any judge. Old enough to be his mother. Hell, old enough to be his grandmother, maybe, but still not bad looking with her black hair only lightly streaked with grey and pulled back tightly in a bun at the back of her neck. She had a red bindi dot on her forehead, and large dark eyes that spoke wisdom and mystery.

She dabbed ointment of some sort into the furrow, which stung like a bitch at first, then turned the whole thing blessedly numb. Then placed a thick wad of clean bandages over it and secured it with a strip of cloth wound round his waist a time or two.

"Thanks - - for this," he indicated his newly bandaged wound, shrugging on his damp jacket again, feeling a little embarrassed, standing there with bare torso in front of a pair of strange women. "Umm - - you speak pretty good Japanese."

"As do you," the woman smiled at him and he thought maybe there was a gentle jibe there, but wasn't certain.

They stood staring at him, the old one and the young one, who was looking up from under her lashes, a slight smile on her face, less subtle than her mistress.

"Um - -yeah. Thanks," Sano backed out, feeling awkward. Kenshin bowed at them politely, silently, and preceded Sano down the corridor back to their own cabin. Better to stay off deck and out of sight until the ship sailed out of dock.

"Well," Sano said, taking stock of the cabin. There was a spindly table bolted to the wall with a chamber pot atop it. A couple of nets for stowing gear hanging from hooks inside the door. That was it. The top hammock, when strung up looked to put a man's face not far from the low ceiling. Neither one offered many options to do anything other than sleep, unless a man got damned creative. All things considered, Sano doubted Kenshin would be up for anything mundane, much less creative for the foreseeable future. Which meant this was going to be a long five days sailing to Madras.

"You get the top bunk." Sano flopped down on the newly strung bottom one. Kenshin gave him a tired look. Slowly let himself fold down to a comfortable position, cross-legged against the wall next to the corner where his sword was, gone silent, turning things over in his head.

Sano sighed, figuring that going over it again a waste of his breath. Kenshin would chew on this as long as he had to, either coming to some reasonable conclusion or some skewed, honor bound one that only someone raised in the way of a hidebound samurai could fathom.

"I think I'll take a nap." Sano stuffed his hands behind his head, finding a comfortable enough position in the hammock if he let one leg dangle just so. "Wake me if they ring the breakfast bell."

It wasn't breakfast that woke Sano from his doze, but a crack of thunder. He started awake, clutching for support that wasn't there as the hammock swayed. This was no ship at port, but one well out to sea, he could feel it in the constant, rollicking motion when he put his feet to the deck.

"Damn, " he swore softly, having no fondness for storms at sea. The last one, on the boat back from China to Japan, had had him vomiting into a pail for a day and a half. That was one of those little details he'd left out of his adventures when he'd recounted them to Kenshin.

Kenshin who still sat against the wall, arms across his knees, head down, dozing maybe, despite the storm in that guarded position he'd resort to when there were enemies at his back, or demons nipping at the edges of his sanity. Sano figured those demons were mightily agitated now.

He sighed, swinging his legs off the hammock and perching there a moment as the boat tipped under him, trying to steady his head and his stomach. Whatever had been blowing into port when they'd boarded this ship, they'd apparently sailed right into. He blew out a breath, trying to find that calm that would stave of nausea. Stretched and winched a little at the pull from the wound in his side. His clothing was dry though, so he'd slept a good few hours, he guessed.

He nudged Kenshin with his foot and his head came up, eyes mostly hidden by unruly hair.

"So looks like we've got a storm." Sano stated the obvious.

Kenshin didn't offer response. He looked a little paler than usual. Maybe not dealing so well with all the rocking of the deck either. It made Sano feel a little better, the idea of shared nausea.

"I'm hungry. Gonna head to the galley. Coming?"

Kenshin shook his head. The long silences always tended to make Sano a little crazy. A little irritable.

"You gonna sit here and sulk?"

Kenshin slanted a narrow eyed look up at him.

And it wasn't fair, accusing him of it. Really it wasn't. This was a no small thing to Kenshin. It had been no small thing when he'd admitted to the death at his hands at Winter's estate and that hadn't really even been his fault, far as Sano could see. What he'd done to Winter - - well, Sano had heard those threats - - Sano would have killed the guy and it wasn't even his family that had been on the receiving end of them. It was a wonder Kenshin had been thinking at all. Likely, he hadn't been.

But, Kenshin pushed himself up. A little less graceful than usual. A little effort put into gaining his balance once he had his feet under him. The sway of the deck maybe - - maybe he'd just gone stiff and sore from the damage he'd taken under Winter's care, finally. It was overdue.

Sano stuffed his hands into his pockets, and headed out the cabin down the corridor and the hatch leading down. Found the galley easy enough by the scent of food. It smelled like gruel and exotic spices - - not an entirely appealing smell when he was a little unsteady on his feet - - but his stomach was rumbling despite it and Sano was game to give it a try.

A long narrow cabin, with two plank tables with benches bolted to the floor and a swinging door leading to the galley proper. This was the passenger galley, not the crew one, and there were about a half dozen people already there. The two Indian women. A group of Hindu men with beards and turbans gathered together at the end of the table. An elderly European looking man with his nose in a book, ignoring them all. The women were playing some game involving an embroidered, cross-shaped piece of cloth and an array of small gaming pieces.

A ship's boy, dark skinned and skinny and not more than twelve, asked in English what they wished. Sano caught part of the question. The elderly Indian woman was kind enough to translate. "He asks if you wish breakfast?"

"Sure," Sano said and glanced at Kenshin

"Just tea."

The lady told that to the lad, and the boy scurried through the galley door.

Sano sat down not far from the women, Kenshin settling beside him. He leaned an elbow on the table and put on his smooth smile. He had hit and miss success with women, some loved him, some hated him and damned if he knew exactly what any of them were thinking, but these two had helped him out and he assumed some good will from them.

"Thanks. Again. I keep meaning to pick up a little English."

The older woman inclined her head. "Wise choice. The English are voracious in their pursuit of empires. Knowledge of their tongue is only prudent."

"You're pretty good at a lot of languages, huh?"

"My husband was a scholar of some repute."

The boy brought out a trey with a bowl of lumpy, white porridge and two metal mugs of tea. Kenshin looked at Sano's bowl, then away. Sano took a breath, figured if it came up again, it couldn't look much worse than it did now, and delved in.

"What game is that?" Kenshin asked softly, sounding a little strangled, and probably not really caring about it as much as he was trying to get his attention away from the sight and smell of Sano's breakfast.

"It is called Chopat," the older one said. "It is a very old game."

Kenshin gave her a faltering smile, inclining his head, but his heart wasn't in engaging in conversation, that was clear. Sano slid down the bench, leaving his empty bowl behind, and looked at the game himself. It didn't seem the sort of thing one might easily place bets on - - it seemed rather a long, complicated mess, so his interest was limited. But the younger girl was pretty - - dark and exotic - - and it was better than sitting there trading silences with Kenshin.

"So, you two headed for Madras, huh? You live there?"

"For many years," the matron said. "I am Pakshi wife of Narasimha Chopras. This is Satya, my niece."

The girl lowered her lashes and gave Sano a flirty look. A man had to be flattered, especially sitting next to Kenshin who had the irritating and entirely unwitting ability to draw female attention. Sano remember fondly how it had habitually driven Kaoru mad. Doubly so when Kenshin hadn't noticed half the time.

"Satya. Pretty name." Sano grinned at her. The girl didn't blush, and she should have, sitting next to her aunt and looking at Sano the way she was looking. Or maybe it was just him being used to Japanese girls and not Indian ones, and she wasn't really casting him an invitation with her pretty eyes.

"Thank you, Pakshi san, for your help before," Kenshin said. And maybe he'd noticed the invitation in the girl's eyes too - - amazing - - because there was actually the slightest hint of edge in his voice, which made Sano's grin all the wider.

She inclined her head, accepting that. Waiting for them to return the favor of names.

Sano jumped in when Kenshin didn't immediately. "I'm Sano. He's Kenshin."

"What business do two fine Japanese gentlemen have in Madras?" the niece asked tartly, and Sano had to laugh, never having had the occasion to be called a fine gentleman before.

"We're after a ship," Sano said, and caught the barest flicker of Kenshin's eyes. Not happy with him blurting their intentions for all to hear. Kenshin could be damned secretive, but then, Kenshin had grown to manhood in the midst of a lot of dicey politics and backstabbing during the revolution, so maybe it was just survival instinct. Sano sure hadn't had to deal with the dark maneuverings of the minds behind the Meiji when he'd been doing his part in that same revolution. He hadn't been anybody's weapon - - not like Kenshin had been.

"Ah. Many ships travel to Madras."

"This one has a girl and a kid on board - -"

"Sano - -" Soft warning.

"Yeah? I don't see what difference it makes."

Kenshin said nothing to that flare of temper. Just folded his hands around the mug of tea and stared into its faintly rippling surface. The woman, Pakshi, watched him for a moment, dark eyes moving from him to Sano.

Finally she turned her attention back to the game. "Would you care to learn - -?"

"Sure." It was close to a week's sailing time from Colombo to Madras, India. What else did he have to do?

Chapter Twenty-seven

The storm dwindled to uneasy seas and light rain by nightfall. By the following day, the skies were blue and the seas ahead clear and smooth, the deck rolling gently underfoot instead of bucking with the vengeance of angry sea spirits. A relief to have equilibrium back. Kenshin felt naked without it. Sunlight was a welcome thing, after a day spent in the musty underbelly of a ship. Passengers and crew alike found reason to be on deck.

The ladies had spread a blanket on deck towards the stern, long, colorful scarves protecting them from spray and wind as they chatted, embroidering complicated patterns on cloth. Sano sat with them, outside the edge of their blanket, having failed during the previous evening to find a game of chance among the crew. The Gravenhage's captain was a man of fervent Christian faith and frowned mightily upon gambling or drinking or carousing of any mischievous nature on his ship. Which left Sano no option but to find entertainment where he could.

Kenshin was admittedly poor company, his focus narrowed and aimed at a goal that was very close to his reach. Four days. Four days and they would close a gap that had seemed insurmountable at times. The lady Pakshi had offered, when they reached Madras, to have one of her boys guide them in the city to the most likely places travelers would stay waiting for their ship to sail.

Sano had told them more than Kenshin would have preferred, but perhaps Sano's openness had gained them something - - an interest from a lady of wealth, in what must have seemed, from Sano's abridged story, a great adventure. Sano had a knack for story telling and an imagination for changing relevant facts with flourish. The ladies had been rapt. An abducted wife and child. An exhausting pursuit. Sano glossed over the blood and the pain as if it had all been some grand adventure and Kenshin, finally having taken all he could, had left the galley and retreated, sick to the core from causes above and beyond the tossing of the ship.

Angry at Sano. Shamed by the looks of pity the women had passed his way, because of tales he'd very much rather Sano had not spun. He hadn't spoken to Sano till the next morning, pretending sleep, when Sano finally returned to the cabin. And Sano had given him a look then, a careless, smug arch of the brow when Kenshin finally had to confront him - - hard not to in a room barely bigger than a storage closet - - that made Kenshin grind his teeth and work hard to subdue the urge to do him some violence. Until Sano told him about the aid he'd garnered from the lady, who, Sano confided was very concerned with the plight of a woman and child stolen from their home.

Kenshin had bowed to her when he'd seen her on deck, and quietly offered thanks, and she'd patted his hand and given him another of those sympathetic looks that made him curl up a little inside in embarrassment. One could only guess what else Sano had told them after Kenshin had left him to his own devices.

Through the morning, he sat with his back to the deckhouse and watched the endless patterns of light and shadow in the swells. Lunch broke the pattern and he had enough of an appetite back to take rice and a bit of salted fish on deck. Sano sat down next to him and consumed his own food with the quiet intensity Sano usually devoted to meals.

Sano sat afterwards, giving him a sidelong look. "Still pissed?"

"I wasn't - -"

Sano snorted at that flat out lie.

Kenshin picked a last grain of rice from his bowl with his fingers and flicked it over the rail into the sea. "No."

Sano grinned. "Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little."

Kenshin rolled his eyes, snorting himself. "You, the great philosopher."

"Hey, don't sell me short. I'm deeper than I let on, you know."

He sat his empty bowl down, leaned back against the deckhouse. Quietly admitted. "I know."

Sano turned his own bowl in his hands, chewing that admission over, seeming a little embarrassed.

"So, you ought to come over and sit with the ladies. Pakshi's teaching me a few phrases in English - - you know - - the sort of things you need to know how to ask in a foreign city."

Kenshin recalled nights spent at the dojo, Kaoru eagerly soaking up the knowledge Winter was all too willing to impart. Of Kenji running to him on his short legs, his round face beaming with the delight of picking up a new word. A foreign word. Kenshin had no desire, he really didn't, of learning that tongue. What was the need once he found Kaoru and Kenji and returned them safely home?

Sano said something in that language and sat there, waiting for Kenshin to inquire after meaning. It was either give in or sit there under Sano's stare, so he sighed and asked.

"Where's the brothel?" Sano cackled, utterly pleased with himself.

"She did not teach you that?" It seemed improbable that a lady of Pakshi's apparent quality would.

"Satya did. She's got a wicked streak. I like her. I've heard stories, you know, about some of the things Indian women know how to do to please a man."

"She's not a prostitute, Sano."

"Who said anything about prostitutes? I saw _pictures_, when I was in China."

Kenshin remembered very well Sano's tales of his _adventures_ on the mainland. At the time of telling, not long on the trail from the mountains beyond Tokyo, he'd felt no particular concern. It bothered him a little now, the idea of Sano and the women he'd claimed to have bedded. It bothered him in a new and unique way when Sano flirted shamelessly with a sloe eyed Indian girl behind the back of her Aunt, if not directly in front of her. He wondered if it were jealousy. He'd never had the occasion to experience the feeling before. He'd loved two women in his life and neither had given him the occasion to doubt. Properly raised Japanese girls both and above repute.

Improperly raised, street brawlers, who drank and gambled and had no shame visiting the red light districts - - having wheedled and whined trying to talk _him_ into visiting with him on no few occasions - - put him off his balance in ways that he'd never been off it before.

"I would not mention these pictures to the ladies, if I were you."

"You think not?" Then Sano considered, eyeing him with speculation. "Some of those pictures - - interesting positions, you know? Crazier than any shunga I've ever seen. Be interesting to try some out."

"Sanosuke." Kenshin felt vaguely scandalized, speaking of such things mid-afternoon, with no few people on the deck with them. He cast a look under his hair to see if anyone lingered close about.

Sano chuckled, still amused with himself, then pushed himself up, gathering the bowls to take back to the galley.

"So, I 'm game to learn a little more before we get there. Should've taken Saitou up on it on the first boat ride - - but Pakshi's a better teacher. Doesn't make me want to smash her face in every other sentence, so just as well. When you feel the need for company, come on over."

He did eventually drift over, settling against a coil of rope and listening to their talk. Sano was charming in that way he had, uncouth, but earnest, with that white grin and his black rimmed eyes and the unruly fall of dark hair that had the ladies, even matronly Pakshi giggling at his wilder claims, and listening avidly as he told of this exploit of his or that. Kenshin did not doubt there was no small bit of exaggeration if not downright fabrication in some of the tales. Sano had a taste for fable and happily wove it into his own stories when he was out to impress impressionable listeners.

With evening came cloudy skies and light rain, which chased them below decks. The ladies retreated to their cabin, and Sano and Kenshin to theirs, having little to do after supper but while away the time in cramped quarters. Kenshin unsheathed his blade, the first time since the fight on the wharf, and went about meticulously cleaning it. The rain had washed away the blood, but there were always nooks and crannies in the leather of the hilt, or the steel of the guard that might hide specks of red.

He'd spent the night before, waiting for some guilt or shame or feeling of failure on his part to wash over him for Winter's death. But none came. Only the subtle relief of knowing the man would plague him and his no longer. He worried that it came too easy, the acceptance of that death at his hands, when very few of the deaths he had carried out in the name of the restoration had. He remembered faces, even the briefest flashes of the death masks of men that he'd cut down in passing, obstacles to some greater goal. Heads that had tumbled under the arc of his steel, staring up at him in shock, before someone else came to claim them as trophies in a war of change. Not all warriors. Innocents too, that had met their end at his hand, at the command his masters, houses of the Shogunate that could not be allowed to be a point at which their soldiers rallied.

Those were the worst. There had not been a night, for close to five years after he'd left the service of the Meiji that he'd not dreamt of those faces and woke sweat drenched and shivering, despising himself for the things he had done. He'd cleaned his blade those days, to the point of fanaticism.

Sano watched him lazily, sprawled in his hammock, arms folded behind his head. Supper tonight had been fish stew and flatbread and fresh fruit. It was a short voyage, from Ceylon to Madras and the ship's cook could afford to splurge. Sano was happily full, barefoot and shirtless, and sucking on a stick of flavored sugar that Pakshi had given him. She had changed his bandage after supper, as well and Sano had begged a small portion of the salve she used and a few clean bandages for the wounds on Kenshin's shoulder and leg. The worst of the dog bites that were not healing as quickly as the rest.

"You've been at that for a while. You think it's clean yet?"

Kenshin ran the cloth up the length of steel and wished for a whetstone. There was the tiniest whisper of a knick on the sharp side. The result of the bullet he'd deflected from Sano, perhaps. It bothered him, that faint imperfection in his blade.

Sano swung off the hammock, ambled over and slid down the wall next to Kenshin.

"Want some?" He offered the sugar stick and Kenshin shook his head.

"Tastes sweet, with heat at the same time. Exotic."

Kenshin paused, canting a look up at him. "You like the idea of exotic."

Sano shrugged. "Yeah. Guess so. There's nothing like discovering something new. Learning something new. New foods. New faces. New trouble to mix up." He grinned.

"So - - if you had a girl like Satya - - new and exotic - - would you be happy?"

"Why? You think she's looking for a husband or just a good lay?"

Kenshin snapped his mouth shut, turning the blade to examine the guard.

Sano made a sound, and risked the naked steel in Kenshin's hand to lean against him, one arm snaking around his neck to draw him close. "You're an idiot."

"Occasionally," he admitted, the sword carefully across his knees.

Sano sighed, leaning back, arm still draped across the back of Kenshin's neck. He smelled of the rainwater they'd both washed up with before the supper bell and sweet spices of the sugar stick. If he found a woman, it would be a practical thing. Best for all involved. But not an Indian one. Not unless she were willing to live in Japan - - because Sano across a sea would not be an acceptable thing. A quiet, Japanese wife, who would take care of him. A good cook - - Sano would like that - - but plain faced, who might inspire very little creativity with Sano in the privacy of their room. Or none at all. Perhaps this fictional wife and Kaoru might become fast friends, keeping each other company, while he and Sano - -

He shut his eyes, grip tightening on the hilt of the sword and thought, _this is what I've come to_. _No honor left to me and I can't stop it. _

He slid the sword back into its sheath. Sano broke off the end of the sugar stick and offered it. This time Kenshin took it, closed his own eyes and leaned against Sano as the sweet spices melted in his mouth. Sometimes simply soaking up Sano's heat, shoring himself up against Sano's youthful vitality when he felt his own waning - - and sharing his company - - was enough.

There were gulls soaring overhead, specks against the blue sky, diving now and then into the waves, fishing for mackerel. The surest sign that land was not far ahead. A day, the captain promised, and they'd see the coastline of India.

Not soon enough. Holding onto patience and calm seemed an insurmountable thing, when his body wanted something - - anything - - to occupy it. He wanted to pace the deck, and had, until the crew began giving him wary looks. He supposed they would take less kindly if he brought the sakabatou on deck and went through patterns and stances and guards, disciplined repetitive moves that blanked the mind of anything but the weight of the sword and the balance of the body it was an extension of.

Sano tired of trying to talk to him mid-day and retreated to the company of the ladies. Kenshin thought, after two days of their company, that Sano was infatuated far more with Pakshi than her pretty niece. Pakshi treated him like an indulgent mother, offering praise and sweets and Sano lapped it up.

They were playing some game involving cards, on a blanket on the deck, one of the male Hindu passengers making up a fourth, when the crewman high up in the crow's nest above the rigging called out, and sailors moved to the forward deck to see what was about.

The captain strode out himself, with his looking glass, and stood with his first mate, pointing at square white sails in the distance. The passengers crowded in amongst the crew, shading their eyes and watching the steady approach of the other ship.

"They say it is a frigate," Pakshi said, standing at the rail between Sano and her niece. "A British warship."

Kenshin scanned the horizon, the sky darkening just enough to the east to hint that the weather was fouler there than here. There was a tiny flash of reflection there. A glimpse of shape against the grey.

"There's another there."

The ladies turned, Satya commenting to a nearby crewman, who called forward to his superiors. There was a murmur then, of question among them, as the captain swung his glass east.

"War ships usually patrol the coast?" Sano asked.

Pakshi shrugged. "They come and go. Madras is a major port."

It took better than an hour for the frigate to close on them and there were signals exchanged, a combination of flags waved between ships and the Gravenhage's captain called for this crew to furl the sails, and slow the ship to a crawl as the warship sailed close, portside to starboard. The frigate rode taller in the water than they did, sporting more sails, longer stern to aft. Its deck was crawling with crewmen and crisply uniformed officers, its hull lined with the dark mouths of canon ports. The captains met at their respective rails, exchanging hurried salutations, a rapid-fire chatter of information none of which Kenshin could comprehend. The crewmen seemed rapt though, whispering among themselves, passing bits of information down the line as their officers conferred.

Pakshi brought a hand to her breast, a look of dismay on her face.

"What? What is it?" Sano demanded, his few phrases in English not enough to understand what they were saying. What the whispers among the crew were about.

"They're searching for survivors," Satya said, before her aunt could wave a sharp hand at her in warning.

"Shush, girl. Listen for the details else you speak falsely."

Satya shut her mouth, biting her lip. Looking towards the bow - -distinctly not looking at him.

"Survivors of what?" Sano asked and Kenshin was glad of it, for he found himself oddly short of breath.

"A ship," Pakshi said softly. "A ship gone down in a storm three days past. They're asking our captain if we've seen wreckage - - or sign of survivors."

"Oh," Sano said, eyes scanning all those dark portholes with their hidden cannons. Then sliding back to the men at the rail. Finally asking the pertinent question. "What ship?"

"This time of year, the storms come and go fast. Ships sink. Fishing vessels litter the ocean floor. I'll go and find out." She beckoned Satya and the girl fell into line, the two of them weeding their way though the mulling crew towards the ship's officers.

The Frigate was moving away, ponderous grace as she cut through the waves, rocking the smaller schooner with the backwash of her departure. Kenshin stood with his hands on the rail, wood biting into his palms.

"It's not her ship," Sano said. "Like Pakshi said, some fishing vessel out too far, caught in a storm."

Kenshin stared at the square back of the departing frigate. "Would the British send their warships to search for the survivors of some native fishing boat?"

Sano didn't have an answer for that. Kenshin didn't look at him to see - -he couldn't take his eyes off the swell of waves. His pulse was thudding, racing like he was in the midst of some great battle. He blew out a breath, forcing calm. Trying to quiet the riot his thoughts wanted to stir. Sano was right. It could not be her ship, among all the ships that came and went from a port the size of Madras. And three days past - - her ship should have been in port - -unless - - unless it had taken the passage slower, laden with more cargo than this sleek, lightweight passenger schooner they traveled upon.

"Kenshin, stop worrying. It can't be her ship. Our luck can't be that bad, right?"

"Of course," he said, hardly hearing himself. Not _their_ luck. His luck. _His_ karma that had demanded so little payment of him for all the black marks he had against him.

The ladies were coming back, two graceful, colorful figures among a sea of men in seaman's drab. The niece behind with her head down, shawl covering her glossy hair, hiding her expression, the aunt with her face set - - not a woman who let emotion get the best of her. And he was scared of a sudden of what she had to say. Terrified to the core of him.

"Well?" Sano turned on them, impatient.

She turned her eyes to him instead of Sano. "It was a vessel that sailed under the flag of the British East India company. She was the Eastcourt. So far no survivors have been found. I am so very sorry."

"Wait. Wait, are you sure?" Sano was pressing her. "But they're still searching, right? Why would they still be searching if they didn't think - -?"

She was answering him, calmly, softly, and Kenshin couldn't focus on the words. As if the Japanese she and Sano spoke had turned into foreign gibberish. He stood there, swallowing and swallowing. Lost. Nothing he could do with a sword and all the skill in the world to prevent a storm from consuming a ship. Three days down. Three days - - and Kenji couldn't swim. Kenshin, having no skill at it himself, had never had the occasion to teach him. Remiss of him, really, living in a city full of canals on the edge of Tokyo bay.

A hand on his shoulder an intrusion into personal space and indignant anger exploded. He spun, catching the offending wrist and shoving backwards. Sano yelped, staggering, wide eyed and shaking the hand and Kenshin stared at him, red around the edges of his vision, half aware of the shocked faces of people beyond him. Blurred foreign faces that meant nothing.

"Don't touch me."

"Damnit, Kenshin - -"

It could have been one of the woman, who stared at him, beyond Sano, that he'd lashed out at and a woman's bones fractured easier than a man's. That would have been regrettable.

"Don't touch me," he said, softer, the cold creeping in around the edges.

"They're still looking - -" Sano flung an arm.

He turned his back, staring at endless water. Not even a sliver of land yet.

"Leave him alone," he heard Sano say, before he stopped listening.

He stared into water long gone black, even the reflection of stars hidden by cloud cover, only the occasional flicker of reflection from the ships lanterns slithering along the water's surface. He'd stood here all the afternoon, the movement of people like ghosts around him. Sano come and gone. Come and gone again. Saying things - - perhaps sensible things - - reassurances, consolations, urging him to hope for things that any reasonable man knew were fantasy.

Numb throughout. Sometimes not thinking at all, dully surprised when the sun edged down the horizon, the sky all washed in grey. Everything washed in grey. Death was no stranger. Death followed him, preceded him, courted him no matter that he tried to avoid it. For the sake of his soul - - if one believed in such things. For the sake of _kami,_ if one wished to believe in more traditional fabrications. His parents had believed.

His parents, what little he could recall of them - - slivers of memory that formed no cohesive whole - - had been superstitious folk. He remembered wards on the door. Charms against evil. Tales told of this demon or that malicious spirit and what ills they could bring on a boy whose _kami _was stained. A trip, through mud and rain, to the peasant shrine outside their village, to offer what little they had when the sickness had struck.

He remembered the flames when the villagers had burned his house, his parent's bloating bodies within, dead from the sickness, stricken as so many had been by the ill favor of the gods. Because of something they'd done, surely. Some impurity that had stained them, some terrible _tsumi_ that must have warranted so cruel a fate.

He'd believed in the old spirits, in the wives tales until Hiko had wrenched those fears out of him, Hiko Seijuro having no fear of earthly or other earthly beings. Hiko invited the wrath of demons with a vengeance, challenging all and sundry to test _his_ wrath. That utter irreverence, that utter lack of apprehension about the things that dwelled just outside the realm of men - - was a very appealing thing to a boy who had only ever known superstition and fear. So Kenshin had learned at the feet of master Hiko, that tales of the old spirits and the wrath of the gods and the consequences of karma were things that the old and the weak and the poor, and the easily led used to find their way in the world. Excuses to explain away their own failings. Men made their own luck and they lived and died by it.

Only he'd always recalled the whispers of those early years, before Master Hiko. Made the occasional trek to this shrine or that - - if it happened to be on his way - - to try and wash away a little of the stain. Hiko would have laughed at him. But then Hiko didn't harbor a niggling fear in the back of his mind where childhood memories dwelled, of the wrath of vengeful spirits.

Hiko didn't cleave to things that he might regret losing should he fail to intimidate those wailing demons. Nothing but a shack in the mountains, with threadbare mats and a leaking roof. Not even a dog to tempt fate.

Much less a wife and a child. With the blood on his hands - - the copious oceans of blood - - it had only been a matter of time. His fault. His tempting of fate - - when he'd known - - he'd damned well known, that he didn't deserve the relief he had found. This was vengeance upon him. Payment for his sins, taken by something so vast he couldn't even raise a sword against it in retaliation. As if one could retaliate against karma.

He curled his fingers on the rail, forcing images on himself, brutal imaginings of bodies plunged into unforgiving, unfathomable depths. Sinking, sinking, drawn under along with wreckage, huge and heavy and black. A child's pale, cold face, eyes wide and cloudy, small limbs drifting and lax in the void. A wash of black hair, swaying like silk in the current, parting to reveal the soft curve of a woman's cheek.

He shut his eyes, pressing his forehead against the rail, silently screaming through his clenched teeth. Horrified by the imagery, beckoning it in like the glint of a wakizashi towards his gut. Her wide, accusing eyes. Staring at him as she floated, dead pale thing below the waves. _Payment for your sins_. _Your sins, not ours._ _You should have known_. _Selfish. Selfish. You betray me and then you let me die - - the least you could do, is join us - _-

Her voice echoed in his head and he blinked, the cloud of numb that he'd been wallowing in since he'd understood them gone, simply washed away with her sensible solution. The pain rushed in to fill the void. Rocks filling his insides, cold and hard and heavy, lancing through his guts like acid and he screamed again, this time a howl that broke the silence of the ship. He had betrayed her - - betrayed Kenji - - the things that he cherished the most. Betrayed them by inviting death among them in the form of a murderous Englishman. Betrayed them with Sano. Betrayed them by not having the sense to put himself far distant from them - - taking his impurity and the ill fortunes it always seemed to bring upon him well away from them.

Fool. Fool, to have thought differently. He slammed his forehead against the railing, again, that dull pain not even making a dent against the utter agony gripping his insides. Innocent eyes looking up at him - - trusting. Small hand in hers as they walked - - looking back at him, trusting he'd keep them safe. Wetness blurred his vision, and he wasn't sure if it were blood or tears. It hurt. It hurt and he'd have died a thousand times to have avoided this. She was right. It was the least he could do - - the very least - -

Hands grabbed him from behind, jerking him back from the rail and the darkness that had swallowed his world. The rushing of the ocean filled his head, the frenzy of some desperate need to escape, and he fought the hold, growling with animal intensity. Howling with it when he couldn't break the hold that pinned his arms and kept him from free movement. Feet against the edge of the aft deck house and he propelled himself backwards, the body behind him impacting the rail with enough force to shatter wood. He heard a cry of pain, a scrambling for footing that almost allowed him freedom, save the damned long arms refused to loosen their grip - - tightening it if anything - - wrenching the air out of him, wrenching him off his feet and slamming full force into the deckhouse wall.

"You crazy son of a bitch - - you want to kill us both? That what you want?" The voice got through, screaming in his ear. A forehead drove into the back his skull, driving his own into the wood. Vision swam, warm salty wetness seeped inside his mouth. It ran down his face. Blood. It had to be blood. And the sobbing - - he could hear the sobbing echo of ghosts - - too many damned ghosts - - drifting just beyond the range of his vision.

It was a blessing when they drew him down with them into darkness.

Sano let Kenshin fall. Leaning one forearm on the deckhouse wall, twisting the other hand to his back, which blared pain from the damned hard impact against the railing. He looked over his shoulder, at the broken guardrail. They'd come that close to crashing through and getting swallowed up by the sea. Probably with none the wiser, black as the waters were. Or maybe not - - from the footsteps of crewmen roused to alarm by the scuffle.

A few poked their heads around, warily and Sano held up his hands and said in English learned from Pakshi.

"Okay. It's okay."

He didn't know how to explain more. Even if he'd been speaking his own tongue, he wouldn't know how to explain this madness of Kenshin's away. And madness it was. A complete leap off the edge of sanity into whatever morass of grief and guilt that Kenshin had pulled himself into.

The crewmen were staring, wary, and damned if Sano wanted to wait for them to call ships officers to stick their noses into a private matter. He grabbed Kenshin's arm, got him up enough to haul over a shoulder. Sano's back complained, his shin did, and his knee where Kenshin had gotten in good shots. He shouldered his way through them and they let him pass. Maneuvered down the steps to the lower deck and their cabin, and tossed Kenshin into the lower hammock.

His back hit the wall, and he braced himself there, staring at the blood trickling from the corner of Kenshin's mouth, the trail of it from his nose, thinking - - _Idiot. Idiot._ And not being able to get past that. Just pissed and rightfully so, because Kenshin always had gotten stupid in his grief - - but this - -

He let himself slide down and sat there, wetness trickling down his own nose. He wiped a hand and it came away red. His nose throbbed a little, but he'd taken worse hits. A lot worse. He clenched his teeth, clenched his fists to keep from shaking when he thought again how close they'd come to going overboard. Thinking what might have happened if he hadn't been there, keeping vigil. Something in his gut having warned him not to trust Kenshin, who'd been stretched too damned thin for too damned long in this thing to take this sort of blow without breaking one way or another.

And Sano shared the pain. For Kaoru, who'd he'd enjoyed riling - - who he'd been a little envious of - - who'd been a friend. For a kid, that he'd never met, but was Kenshin's - - and that was enough. For Kenshin, who carried around enough guilt and didn't need this one more massive block weighing him down.

Sano hit the floor. A solid rap of knuckles. Again, thinking _how's he gonna get over this?_ Because all that talk he and Pakshi had been spewing about there still being hope - about them still searching so maybe they'd find survivors and maybe a girl and a kid might be among them - - well, that was just somebody refusing to accept reality, days after the fact. Realist that he was, Kenshin had already accepted it.

Sano looked at Kenshin's sword, propped in the corner, thinking the last thing Kenshin needed access to at the moment, when the grief was fresh and his sanity was a little in doubt, was a blade.

Kenshin slept like the dead. Not a groan, not a movement, even when the ship shuddered when she gently edged into dock, hull bumping pier. Sano had to slap him awake, finally, and he felt no compunction against putting a little force behind it, having gotten a glimpse at the damned big bruise on his back and _feeling_ it with every movement.

Sano backed away from the sudden jerk - - the sudden defensive movement of hands as Kenshin snapped back to awareness.

"Up," Sano said, as Kenshin was blinking in disorientation. Sano hoped he had one hell of a headache to match the ache in Sano's back.

Kenshin didn't move, the hammock swaying gently under him, things starting to register behind forced-sleep hazed eyes. He looked up at Sano, one sharp glance, before flicking his gaze away, maybe preparing to plunge back into that morass of self-pity he'd been wallowing in. And Sano was willing to give him ample time to grieve, really he was, but he was damned well going to do it like a sane person.

"We're here," Sano said, planting his fists on his hips. "We've gotta get off the ship. We're going with Pakshi to her house, then she's taking us to the port authority offices to find out what we can about the Eastcourt. Now, if you've got a problem with doing all that like a rational human being, well, I don't have one with knocking your ass back out and hauling you out of here like baggage. And if you think I can't, in this little room with no space for you to move - - think again."

Another flick of the eyes to him. A tightening of the mouth, then Kenshin pushed himself off the hammock. Didn't manage it with anything resembling grace, but then it was hard to gracefully exit a hammock and his head probably was throbbing. Good.

He waited for Sano to move, allowing him a path to the door, then stopped with his hand on it, staring at the corner where the sword had been.

"Where's my sword?" Very softly asked.

"Don't worry about it. Taken care of."

Sano got a profile then, a look from narrowed eyes, before Kenshin lowered his head and hair obscured it. Sano pushed past him, heading for the deck and off this boat. The stench of the docks hit before he even sat foot on deck. The sound of life and activity a buzz in the air before he actually got the vantage to see the sprawling docks. Madras was the central hub for maritime traffic for all of Southern India. The center of operations for the British on this side of the continent. Hundreds of ships and boats and barges weighted down with cargo fought for right way in the harbor. Further down, towards what Pakshi said was the British command post of Fort St. George, military ships rested at dock.

It was early still, only hours after dawn, and the air was already sluggish from encroaching heat. The whole place stank of human sweat - - too damned many people about their business dockside. Sano sauntered down the ramp, after casting a casual glance behind him to make sure Kenshin was trailing him still. Into the crowd of half naked brown bodies. Vendors and dockworkers and those hopeful for day work, westerners here and there among them, administrators or sailors or uniformed soldiers. He saw Pakshi and her niece across the wharf, standing in the company of a middle aged woman and a skinny boy of perhaps ten, at the head of a cart with a very old seeming donkey, piled with their luggage.

"My daughter, Nanda," Pakshi introduced the woman, who eyed Sano, and Kenshin behind him, warily, before inclining her head. "And her son, Rajiv, who is the man of the family."

It took some time to maneuver the little procession through the dockside mob. There were great walls, protecting the city from the port. Very old seeming walls with wind worn carvings that allowed them egress to Madras proper though a towering round portal with raised iron gates.

Once inside, color and sound and smell assaulted them. Hundreds of traveling shops, people set up on blankets, or carrying their wares from their persons, entertainers and acrobats and musicians all trying to coerce a bit of silver. Desperate sounding merchants who screamed at each other in rivalry when not screaming at possible customers to stop and examine their goods. And beggars. Dozens of beggars, beseeching passer by for succor.

If he had not experienced the market streets of Hong Kong, or the poorer, more dangerous slums of Shanghai - - it might have been more overwhelming. As it was, he palmed the very light purse in his pocket to make sure it stayed on his person, and soldiered through. He kept an eye on Kenshin - - fell back to walk a little closer, not wanting to loose him in the press and not sure Kenshin was focused as fully as he might have been on navigating it.

The crowds thinned though, as they departed the harbor district and a body could breath again without inhaling the stench of too many other bodies. Still the crowds were thick, the brown shoulders of young men, the colorful saris of women, all about their business. Still no few beggars, who accosted passer by and most certainly foreign seeming passer by. A trio of mounted English Soldiers in their red jackets and their flat topped black caps, forced back a group of particularly adamant beggars, who closed in on their horses in passing. The rest of the crowd made hasty way for them, wary of skittish horses in their midst.

"The famine," Satya dropped back, walking beside him. "It has driven many into the city, seeking food. And the food comes here in mass, in the belly of cargo ships, but the Company sends it back out, to richer peoples. Sometimes they don't even send it out. I've heard of cargo sitting on the docks - - untouched. But they'd rather let it mold than give to those who cannot pay and starve without."

Sano watched the soldiers in their passage though the crowd. A different sort of military than the British who walked the streets of Colombo. Hardened men, who enforced rule upon a population that so vastly outnumbered them, it was unimaginable.

"You're not crazy about them?"

She shrugged. "Some say the British rule will bring India to a new age. Others - - disagree. Aunt Pakshi says the rule of the Company was worse than the rule of the Empress."

Sano cocked a head, not understanding.

Satya smiled and explained. "Victoria. The queen of the British. They and the maharajas and the powers that be in their wisdom proclaimed her Empress if India when the Governors of the East India Company lost their power to govern. I don't know if ever she's set foot here. I don't care."

Sano grinned back at her. "I sort of think you do. You have opinions."

She arched a brow. "You don't like women with opinions?"

"No, I do. Long as they're not about me."

She laughed and Pakshi's daughter turned a frown back at them. Not approving, Sano thought, this notion of bringing strange men back to their home that her mother had devised.

Pakshi's house was at the end of a residential street lined with closely built houses of some distinction. Several stories tall, made of stone and plaster, with a pair of ornate wooden doors that opened before their little group approached and spilled out a multitude of females. Young and old, plump and thin, all of them in colorful saris and scarves and chattering like a flock of agitated birds.

Sano stopped by Kenshin, who'd snapped out of the fog he'd been walking in to stare with some misgiving at the pack of women.

"These all Pakshi's daughters and nieces?" Sano asked of the boy, Rajiv, who also seemed reluctant to delve into that perfumed mass.

The boy shuffled his feet and nodded.

"Rajiv's Japanese is not so good, but he's learning," Pakshi said, welcoming them into the open courtyard beyond the doors. A second story balcony looked down, protected by gorgeously worked wooden railings. The women skirted in around them, whispering and curious until Pakshi called them to order and introduced them.

"My dears, remember your manners. These are our guests, Sagara Sanosuke and Himura Kenshin. They have come from Japan

And she went about introducing the gathered women. Two more daughters, two nieces, a daughter by marriage, the elderly sister of her late husband, five granddaughters, one great granddaughter who was still in swaddling, and poor lonely Rajiv, alone in a house bursting at the seams with females.

All of them stared with wide-eyed interest, at the two of them, whispering, the way women did among themselves, as if they thought men hadn't the acuity of hearing to realize they were being talked about.

"Ladies," Sano said in English, figuring he'd take the plunge, and walking among them.

The younger ones giggled at that, and gathered around, not demure at all, asking questions he could only barely understand. A press of soft bodies and whispery scarves, and exotic scents that a man couldn't help but find pleasant when he was the center of it.

Kenshin hung back, against the closed doors to the street, as if he were considering bolting, not pleased at all with this press of excited women, hardly knowing what to do with flirting women at the best of times. Pakshi shooed away the few that had abandoned Sano for him and promised coaxingly.

"Allow me to rest my feet, and for us all to quench our thirsts, and then we shall go find out what we can of the ship."

Kenshin did the courteous thing and nodded, but Sano knew him well enough to see the strain. Kenshin holding it together for the sake of appearances, in the company of women to whom he did not wish to shed face. Thank the gods, at least, for the remnants of staunch Samurai pride.

Pakshi had Rajiv show them to the well, inside the courtyard, and the partitioned section beyond it, where they were invited to wash the dust of the road away. The boy led them then to a room, all of three stories up, the only unused room in a house full of women, which looked as if it were primary used now for storage. But there was a breeze, large ornate windows on either wall, the carved shutters of which let through dappled light and air. When the shutters were thrown open there was a view of the sprawling city, with its domes and towers in the distance on the one side, and the Bay of Bengal, sparkling and azure and dotted with ships on the other.

Kenshin sat on the wide ledge staring out at the sea, while Sano prowled the room. There were blankets enough to make a comfortable bed, room to stretch his legs. He went to the window finally and leaned against the opposite sill from Kenshin.

"There might be good news at the harbor master's. Might be survivors they picked up that frigate we passed didn't know about." It was easier to promote optimism than try and find the words adequate for the occasion of losing a wife and child. Sano had never been that good at expressing those deeper things - - easier to avoid them. Easier to let anger and physical action take the place of allowing the world to see emotional weakness. He supposed he was not unlike a great deal of men in that. Uncomfortable with the things that women dealt with daily. Half the women downstairs, that shared Pakshi's house had lost husbands or sons or brothers and they went on.

Kenshin's gaze didn't waver from the Bay. For a while Sano thought he wasn't going to answer at all. Then softly. "Perhaps."

"Gotta hold out hope, right?"

Kenshin's eyes did flick to him them, a somber look, as if Sano were the one that needed solace. And after a moment, he turned his gaze back to the Bay. Clay faced. Not a glimmer of anything resembling emotion in his expression. Cutting himself off. Sano had seen it before. Honestly, he'd rather the raving insanity. That was something he could deal with.

"Sano, could you leave me alone? For a little while?" Very quietly asked. And if he had not had a sane look in his eyes, Sano might have hesitated. As it was, he figured the grieving Kenshin had to do needed a quiet place, with no witnesses.

"I'll come get you when we're ready to leave."

Chapter Twenty-eight

Sano left and it was like relief of pressure that had built and built, held at bay the entire walk here, held rigidly in check while women with faces that were blurred in his memory had clustered, speaking too fast, too loudly to be anything but light and noise.

In this quiet place, in the shadows, with the sounds of a city muted and distant - - with no witnesses - - he choked on a breath - - leaned over his knees on the window seat, chest burning with the raw ache of spiritual pain made physical.

Arguing with Sano about the validity of hope was not a thing he could do and keep any semblance of composure. But he knew - - he knew that luck had swung his way on an edge finer than a sharp blade for far too many times for it to turn his way this one last crucial time. He felt it in his gut.

Images and smells and sounds slid across his memory, one by one, relentless, welcome, devastating. Her voice, her scent, the ghost of her smile or her scowl, of her furrow of concentration when she was intent on getting a stance just so, so as not to embarrass herself in front of students, the curve of her body in the darkness when she shed her robes - -

He dug his fingers into his hair and rocked, wetness winning past the barrier of clenched lids. She made him weep. She made him ache with a pain that pieced him to the core. Kenji thoughts made him want to find a bottle and drown himself in it. Made him welcome that offer of violence Sano had made him when he'd woken this morning - - made him very much wish for painful oblivion to escape the notion of his child dead.

He wasn't sure he wanted to go to the shipping authority and have his fears confirmed. He wasn't sure he wanted to go on period, when he doubted the pain and the grief and the guilt would ever go away.

Hiko would have laughed at him in scorn and called him a coward. Sano would have and cursed him. But he hurt and he was tired and there was a point fighting it became too hard.

The women and damned, there were a lot of them filling the courtyard that seemed the main gathering spot for the extended family, were more somber when Sano came back down. Pakshi and Satya had informed them of the details of the situation, and a multitude of somber, painted eyes turned to him when he shuffled into the courtyard.

The invited him into their midst with a clatter of beckoning, braceleted hands. They had a platter of cut fruit and a pitcher watered down wine on a low table that the majority of them sat around on pillows and strewn cushions. He sank down on a cushion between Satya and a plump girl of similar age. Two or three of them offered him wine simultaneously, and glared at each other afterwards. The old woman, Pakshi's husband's sister, if Sano recalled, poured it herself and Sano hid a grin at the miffed looks exchanged between the younger girls.

"How is he?" Satya asked, leaning forward with the superiority of longer acquaintance.

"Better, once we find out something one way or another." Sano didn't want to discuss Kenshin with them. He didn't want Kenshin a subject for speculation among them, when Kenshin was teetering on the fine edge of losing it.

But women were women, and they spoke among themselves of the tragedy. Of how horrible to die swallowed up by the sea. Of how terrible for a husband to lose a wife and child. But he was certainly young enough to marry again and father many more children. And was Sano married? Tall and fit as he was, he'd father fine sons.

Sano swallowed his goblet of wine and edged it over for the old woman to refill. She gave him a wry look, understanding his need and filled it to the rim.

"Uncle Narasimha left very respectable dowries for his nieces," the plump one, who he thought was called Natun, hinted.

"This is a nice house," Sano veered off that subject uncomfortably. "What did your uncle do?"

"Our father was the second son of the brother of a prince of Oressa." The old woman said. "Family money, even after the British tried to tax it to death. Narasimha had his books and was renowned in all of India for his studies. Even among the English, who consider themselves the only truly educated people. There is a room in this house filled with his books and his scrolls. Pakshi refuses to be rid of them, even though we could use the space."

She waved a hand at a quiet, very pregnant young woman at the edge of the gathering.

Sano slid his gaze across the assembled collection of women. Rajiv had made himself scarce, as well as Pakshi herself. No husbands, no brothers, only the one son. It was an unusual lack of men in a house full of women of marriageable age.

Pakshi descended not long after, in a sari of finer quality than her traveling one.

"Have they been pestering you with their nonsense?" She asked after stopping at a niche with the stone image of a graciously endowed, multi-armed woman and offering respect.

"He's a man," the old woman said, waving a dismissive hand. "What man shrivels under the attention of pretty girls?"

Pakshi gave her a sharp look and Sano got the feeling the two of them, eldest of the household, butted heads frequently.

"Fetch Rajiv from where ever he's off to. I'll need him as escort."

"I'll go," Satya said.

"No." Pakshi said simply and the girl settled back down, pouting.

"So, we ready to go?" Sano asked and the woman nodded.

"Okay. I'll get Kenshin."

The Madras port authority complex was on the north side of Fort St. George, which served as the headquarters for the British government in Madras. There was a concentration of English there, diplomats, soldiers and their families, and the architecture reflected that with a touch of European lines.

It was close to an hour's walk from Pakshi's house, but the afternoon had cooled somewhat, rife with a strong breeze in off the bay and the path she led them on was less congested than the way in from the docks. The streets here were more orderly once they reached the north side, a great deal more white skinned people mingling with the brown. A great many uniformed soldiers, both British and Indian on patrol.

The Port Authority was a sprawling, white washed stone complex that looked as if bits and pieces of it had been added on with different flavors of architecture over the years. There was a congestion of traffic outside, carriages and wagons and tethered horses. People coming and going from various offices, on various errands.

Pakshi, one of the few women in evidence, weeded her way inside, with Rajiv, Sano and Kenshin in her wake. Her sex and the rich cut of her sari afforded her some respect, men making way and doffing caps. There were no few military men in evidence, some in red-coated uniforms, some in sand colored ones. Pakshi found a clerk and made inquiries and was directed to offices in the back. Another clerk took note of her, as they made their way forward, and rose to politely inquire what service he might grant. Their exchange of English was too rapid for Sano to easily follow, so he stood there, next to Kenshin, and watched a cluster of men who were very obviously military outside an office at the end of the hall. There were raised voices within and soon a man of some rank, if the array of decoration on his uniform breast were any indication, came storming out. The lot of milling soldiers outside the office fell into step as he stalked down the hall, passing them with nary a glance.

Rajiv tugged on Sano's sleeve, eyes wide and whispered in his halting Japanese. "It is him. Sir Fletcher."

"Who's he?"

"He commanded the order of the Star of India, the fiercest of regiments. He is second only to Lord Roberts in command of the army in Southern India."

"Seems pissed," Sano observed, watching the retreat of the broad shouldered, balding man in the company of his subordinates.

Pakshi, after a pause while the General passed, was still speaking with the Clerk. After a moment, the man went to the very office Sir Fletcher had stormed out of, and spoke quietly to the occupant. He waved them forward as a harassed looking Englishman stepped out.

"Lady Pakshi," he said and glanced past her to them. She indicated Kenshin and him and spoke in English and Sano picked up words here and there. Kenshin was very still and very quiet, picking up less than Sano, Sano figured. The man offered Pakshi a chair on one side of a cluttered desk. Kenshin refused, standing just inside the door, so Sano stood with him, waiting while Pakshi spoke with the official.

There was nothing in his face, as they spoke, that indicated the good fortune of having found survivors of a shipwreck. Whenever he cast a glance at Kenshin, all he saw was hair shielding his eyes, and a mouth taut with tension. Finally, the man rose and Pakshi did, the former showing her out with a hand hovering at the small of her back. Inclining his head respectfully at her, and casting them all sad, tired looks, before he retreated back into his office.

"What did he say?" Sano asked, before the door had even closed.

She didn't answer, moving through the press of people, scarves swaying. Finally, when they'd breached the doors and stood on the wide stone steps outside, she turned and tried to take Kenshin's hand in hers.

He refused to let her, backing a half step away and asking simply. "Tell me what he said, Pakshi San."

"They have found no survivors. The Eastcourt went down far enough from land that they hold little hope for finding any. The Company has called off its search and the only reason that the British navy still carries out its own search is that General Fletcher had a son on board the Eastcourt and has great influence with the admiral of the British fleet here in Madras. But soon, they too will stop their patrols. I am sorry."

"Thank you, Pakshi San," Kenshin said quietly.

"Wait, but there's always a chance, right?" Sano said. "You hear of sailors or fishermen whose ships went down in storms floating around on debris for days until somebody finds them."

"Such things do happen," she agreed, but she sounded less than hopeful. "They will carry word to you at my residence if anything is discovered.

It was easy enough to slip away. Even from Sano who kept casting him worried looks, but was willing enough to give him the space that he so badly wanted. Simple to fall back, as they walked, Sano distracted by something on the street, and melt into the crowd of a bisecting road.

Towards the bay and the dock street that ran adjacent. Through those crowds that he barely registered, until the docks became fewer and more dilapidated, and finally the wharfs gave way to stone jetties and eventually to sand beaches. The docks were far and away, the forest of masts grey in the distance. The outline of the city was as well, its profile foreign and strange from the rooftops of Japan he was used to. The sounds of it were muted by the crash of waves.

There was nothing here but fishing shacks and trees shielding a dirt road leading towards the city outskirts, where the occasional person walked, baskets or bundles perched on their shoulders, or balanced on their heads. There was the shrill laughter of a group of boys, playing tag with the surf. Further down a pair of fishermen hauled in a wide expanse of net. Kenshin stopped on the beach staring out into the water at the darkening vista of the horizon. Afternoon coming to a close and he wasn't sure where the day had gone. It seemed only hours ago that Sano had woken him on the ship.

The boys screamed in delight down the beach, having found some spidery crab and tossing it among themselves. He thought he saw a smaller one out in the waves, past the white crashing surf. Bobbing in the current, face small and round and paler than these Indian boys. Familiar. He shaded his eyes against a sun close to the horizon, trying to make out that small shape. He was in the water before he realized he'd been moving that way, fighting his way through waves that wanted to knock him off his feet, looking for that small dark head, but the swells kept hiding it from him.

A surging whitecap knocked him off his feet and he went under, struggling up desperately seeking that vision. But it eluded him. All he could see was foam and the occasional gull riding the waves that inexplicably pushed him back towards shore. He sat on wet sand once he'd reached it, the froth rushing up and dragging the earth out from under him with each pass. Dug his hands into the sand helplessly and stared into the face of the uncaring sea. _There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could do._ The thought kept repeating itself in his head, again and again. Sometimes in her voice. Her tones of accusation. _Useless._ Everything he was - - all his skills, all the experience in the world at the sorts of things he'd been brought up to deal with - - useless to them. He'd as well grown up that superstitious, ignorant peasant farmer as a swordsman of notorious repute for all the help he'd been them. That farmer might still have a family, safe and poor and working their fingers till they bled in someone else's fields. But alive. _At least we'd be alive._

Nothing he was had made any difference for them and he knew what he had to do. He rose, an odd, faint numb in his extremities. An odd muffled numb padding his senses. He'd wondered far from Pakshi's house, but he knew the way back. Stone sober, he could find his way back to any path he'd previously tread.

It was dark by the time he reached Pakshi's house. Her street was filled with the smells of supper cooking, of grilled meats and spices. A wealthy street to boast such scents. He stood outside the door and listened for Sano's presence. Heard his voice, finally, amidst the voices of women, likely in the courtyard. Not this way in, then if he wanted to avoid confrontation. There was an alley between houses and he navigated that, a neat stone path, well tended, that led to a walled enclosure where chickens rustled quietly in the growing shadows. The gate was latched, but up and over was not a hindrance for him. He hesitated at the top of the wall, and instead of dropping to the yard below, leapt to the open sill of a window on the second floor.

He crept through a darkened room that smelled of perfumes and spices, with silks over the arms of a chair and womanly things scattered on a vanity with a small, scuffed mirror. It did not smell of Pakshi's scent, so he moved on, silently moving out onto the railed deck that overlooked the courtyard. A large yard, with a fruit baring tree, and a fountain, and a large stone pit which a fire crackled in merrily, roasting skewers of something, while women sat on the edge, keeping charge of the cooking. He saw Sano sitting cross legged under the fruit tree, several of the young women not charged with the cooking, gathered around him. Sano looked less than pleased with their chatter, a scowl on his face, his mouth tight. Not so much annoyed with his feminine hosts, Kenshin thought, as with him. Sano would be upset and angry.

Pakshi was not below though, and he moved on, quiet as Cat on the prowl, until he found a room with a presence within. He knocked once, softly on the door, before slipping in. She looked up in surprise at him, her hands stalled in the process of twining her long hair.

"Forgive me, Pakshi san, for the intrusion. But I need my sword."

She stared at him, large dark eyes, a woman that had without doubt been a beauty of her generation in her youth. Carefully she laid her hair, unbound, across her shoulders and nodded. Rose, and went to a large trunk just inside her door. Inside, atop folded clothes and cloth and the packages a woman might buy to take home with her on the completion of a long journey, lay his sakabatou. She retrieved it and offered it to him upon her open palms.

"He was afraid for you when he gave it to me for safekeeping."

Kenshin closed his fists around the sheath, meeting her eyes for a long silent moment. Not entirely remembering what had happened that night on the ship after he'd learned of the sinking of Kaoru's boat. Perhaps he had given Sano reason to doubt.

"Thank you - - for everything. Thank you for taking care of him - -" he broke off, not sure what it was he needed to ask of her. Too many things battling for dominance in his head. He couldn't shake the vision of Kenji bobbing in the waves - -or the sound of Kaoru's voice in his head.

He backed away, leaving her the way he'd come, heard her call out, but ignored her. Down that walk like a shadow and out the window to the garden gate.

No meandering slow journey this time, sure of his path as he was, back to the outskirts of the city and the beach. Full night now, the moon risen high and casting wan blue light upon the world. The dark shielded him and the weapon he carried from late night travelers that he passed. Held close to his body, even the night watch were none he wiser.

The beach was deserted when he returned to it. Fishermen returned to their homes, nets neatly stacked far enough up the beach that the tides could not reach them. Even the gulls had left, retreated to wherever it was that they nested for night. The only life was the small, skittering crabs that rushed in with the tide, scampering across wet sand, before the returning water pulled them back out. There was a twine ball, lodged in the sand, the toy of some child left behind when he returned home, safe and sound to the arms of his mother.

He drew in a shuddery breath, vision wavering on that abandoned toy. Kenji had had such a ball, that he used to play with Cat, the one game Cat lowered herself to engage in, the stalking of that tossed ball. He could hear Kenji's laughter, delighted by so simple a thing as a cat pouncing on a ball.

He could hear it now, a whisper amidst the crashing of the waves. A fleeting shimmer of white in the corner of his vision and he thought he saw a figure standing out in the waves. A woman in a pale, drenched kimono. Dark hair streaming across her face.

_What good is that? _She whispered and he clenched his fist around the sheath of the sword. _Look where you and your ideals got us._

The waves crashed against her back, but she remained unmoved, the only wavering of her form from the water filling his eyes. He saw, hiding half behind her, a small figure, clinging to the back of her kimono.

"Forgive me," he whispered, thigh deep in the surf, and flung the sword out into the water. It was swallowed up, beyond where she waited, with barely a splash.

"What are you doing?" The question came in the form of a bellow and not in her tones. H glanced away from her, to a figure stomping down the beach. Sano, trudging through the sand along the trail of his own footprints.

"Go away," he yelled back, Sano part of the problem. Sano one of his sins against her.

"The hell - -" Sano stalked down the beach towards him, maybe having followed him all the way from Pakshi's house, alerted by that lady.

When Kenshin looked back for Kaoru, she was gone, flitted away in the white caps. He drew a desperate breath, furious at Sano for following him, for interfering, for chasing her away.

"Damn you! I don't want you here - -" He screamed it at Sano, shoving him backwards when Sano splashed into the water. "She was there - -they were there - -"

He flung an arm out towards the vastness of the ocean, where nothing but moonlight glinted now, nothing but vast darkness broken by the pale lines of whitecaps rolling towards the beach. Sano stared in confusion at the water, then back at him.

"You threw your sword away." _That_ was Sano's concern.

"What good did it do them?" He backed away, deeper into the water and a wave crashed against his back, staggering him. "She blames me. I see it in her eyes."

"She - -? Who? _Kaoru?_ Have you lost your damned mind? Get out of the water."

Sano made a grab for him and Kenshin hissed, evading him, but not the wave that crashed into his back, the solid sand under his feet one moment and nothing the next, turbulent water sucking him under. His back scraped bottom, salt water invaded his ears, his nose, his throat. Burning. He lost his sense of direction for a moment, no notion where surface was. Panicked. Every instinct he had screaming to fight for the surface - - even though part of him said, don't - -this is what they felt. Take the path they did and let the scales balance.

But when his feet found sandy bottom his body followed instinct and he launched himself up, spitting water and gasping for breath, considerably further out than he'd been when he'd gone under. Sano was a dark shake a dozen yards further down, desperately searching the water. Sano saw him and cursed, hair clinging to his face in dark streaming strands.

Kenshin tread water, the bottom out of his reach. There was nothing here but waves and beach and Sano. No ghostly wives. No ghostly children. The waves carried him closer to the beach and he didn't fight it. Sand under his feet again and he staggered towards shore. Sano fought his way through the waves, angling towards him. Kenshin had lost a sandal along the way. Sano still had both of his.

"She's gone, Kenshin," Sano barked at him, jaw clenched, fists clenched. "And I'm sorry- - I'm truly, truly sorry - - but she's not blaming anybody for anything anymore. And even if you weren't fucking losing it and seeing her ghost - - well her ghost would be a damned bitch if she's blaming you for any of this."

"Shut up," Kenshin cried, indignant, wailing rage blackening the edges of his vision. He hit Sano, and Sano staggered a pace back, raising a hand to his mouth. Looked at the blood on his fingers and pulled back his lips in a red rimmed grin.

"Yeah - - okay - -" he swung back and Kenshin didn't even try to avoid it.

Sano probably pulled the punch - - and it still knocked Kenshin back onto the sand. He lay there, both hands over his eyes, blood in his mouth, jaw throbbing. World reeling, and it wasn't from the blow. He could take a decent blow.

He felt the shifting of sand as Sano knelt next to him. Not touching. Just a presence.

"What do you want, Kenshin," Sano asked hoarsely. "You wanna die and join them? That what she's asking you to do? That what you want? "

"Yes," he said through clenched teeth. Then, with sinking despair. "No." Because he didn't - - not deep down where the center of him was. And maybe that was the worst betrayal of all.

"Whatever you think you're seeing - - hearing. It's not her." Sano said. "I know the twit - - and the last thing she'd ever want was you dead. She loved you, idiot."

Loved. Past tense. Sano had admitted it finally - - given up on his pretense of hope. It was a blow of sorts that he hadn't expected.

"He was three years old, Sano. He was only three - -" Everything was a blur. His throat so thick he could barely get the words out.

"I know - -I'm sorry - -" Sano did lay hands on him then, hauling him up roughly, wrapping long arms around him. Kenshin balled a fist in Sano's wet shirt, pressed his forehead against his shoulder and sobbed.

Sano swallowed blood and a little bit of sand and knelt there while Kenshin let out his grief. Other than that craziness on the ship, it was too long coming. Craziness tonight, too, with Kenshin claiming to see ghosts. He cast a wary look at the ocean, having a healthy respect for the things in the shadows and ghosts in particular - - the shades of Buddhist monks haunting their dilapidated shrine had cemented that, thank you - - and he half expected to see something hovering out there.

But there was nothing but waves, and the occasional glimmering white cap, that he supposed someone crazy with grief might in their gnarled, fevered imagination think to be a figure drifting in the water. And he believed what he'd told Kenshin. If Kaoru ever came back to haunt him as a spirit, she'd be a benevolent one, not some accusing shade pushing him towards whatever it was Kenshin had been trying to convince himself of. She'd spent the entirety of the time he'd known her damned and determined to convince Kenshin that he wasn't the monster he thought past deeds had made him.

Of course that didn't mean Kenshin wasn't seeing some sort of kappa, out to cause mischief. Water spirits were notorious for sensing weakness and exploiting it. And Gods knew, Kenshin had enough vulnerabilities now to fall prey to it.

Sano drew his brows, wishing they were further up the beach, out of the edge of the tide and things that held power in it. But he'd brave the ill intentions of water spirits if he had to, to let Kenshin get this out. Sano had lost a person or two in his life and all holding back the grief got you was messed up. You screamed, you cried, you beat the shit out of something if you had to, but you let out. Didn't mean you didn't carry it with you forever, one way or another - - but at least it got you through the day. And the next. And the next.

Kenshin wrung himself dry eventually, limp against Sano for a while after, until he stiffened a little, maybe embarrassed at the show of weakness, and pushed himself away. His hair, come loose from its tail in the waves, was a sodden, sand crusted mess clinging to face and shoulders.

"So - -" Sano had no idea what to say. So he pushed himself up, reached down and caught Kenshin's arm, hauling him up whether he wanted up or not and got them further up the beach where the sand was soft and dry, out of the domain of anything possibly out there lurking in the water. He collapsed back down then, and after a moment, Kenshin did beside him, barefoot and hollow eyed.

"You lost your sandal." Stating the obvious seemed safe enough. Sano was almost afraid to mention the sword, lost out there in the water. Gods knew what Kenshin had been thinking doing that - - but if Sano were any judge it had been some guilt-ridden attempt to punish himself. He'd regret it, Sano figured, sooner or later.

For a long time they sat there in silence, watching the waves, the slow migration of the moon, the distant silhouette of some ship sailing towards Madras harbor.

"It hurts," Kenshin whispered, barely audible.

"Yeah."

Kenshin dropped his head, tangling his fingers in his hair and didn't say more.

By the time it started misting, the moon was far behind them and the horizon over the bay turning purple and red with the onset of sunrise. Sano figured they'd sat out here long enough, clothes gone dry becoming damp again with early morning showers.

"C'mon," he pushed himself to his feet and held out a hand for Kenshin. After a moment, Kenshin accepted it and let Sano pull him to his feet. It would be a long walk back in the rain to Pakshi's and he hoped they still had a place in her home after all the drama. A smart woman, with a family of her own to look after, might well rescind her offer to houseguests not acting entirely within their right minds.

He got as far as the jetties and the houses at the outskirts of the city, before he lost his way entirely, standing in indecision at an unfamiliar cross road. He hadn't been paying a great deal of attention to his surroundings when he'd been scrambling to keep on Kenshin's trail out here. He'd barely caught sight of him at the end of Pakshi's street after she'd alerted him of Kenshin's coming and going with that sword.

Kenshin took the lead then, silently, taking the path Sano would not have chosen, if it had been left to his devices. Leading them a meandering way through grey, mostly deserted city streets in the hours before true dawn, towards Pakshi's house.

Almost he was embarrassed to knock on her door, at this hour, but he was tired and wet again and manners had never figured greatly into Sano's decision making. So he pounded a fist against the doors, while Kenshin stood mutely behind him. She answered it herself, after a few minutes, wrapped in a long robe, with her hair in a long braid across her shoulder.

Kenshin bowed deeply to her, without quite looking her in the eye. "I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, Pakshi San."

She looked more relieved than irritated, Sano thought. "What is life without its inconveniences?" she said. "I rise before the girls, regardless. I was awake."

She ushered them in, out of the rain. The courtyard was glistening with it, water running across the flagstones to a central drain. "If you wish to avoid answering questions from the girls, go upstairs now, though. You'll find dry clothing in the big blue trunk - - my husband's - - my son's - - that should make due. Go, before they rouse."

There was very wan light seeping through the inner shutters in the attic. Just enough to see by without lighting a candle. Sano found the trunk, filled with men's clothing. The belongings of Pakshi's dead. He found he wasn't picky, very much tired of wet cloth against his skin. The clothing, size wise was more suited for Kenshin - - Pakshi's men having been of average size and height, but they were loose enough to fit, even if they were short in the arm and leg. Even the plain ones were of a very fine, very soft fabric, with fine embroidery along the edges.

It had been a very long time since Sano had slept, none since the night before he'd sat vigil on Kenshin on the ship. He felt it now, that seeping exhaustion. He fell into the pile of blankets he'd tossed against a wall, trusting this time, that he could leave Kenshin to his own devices. He was asleep before he'd fully nestled down into his pallet, the sound of the rain on the roof a quiet serenade.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The smell of food woke Sano up. He lay there, sunlight coming in from the inner shutter slats slanted across his face, and figured it was close to noon. Breakfast was long gone, so it must have been lunch smells that were drifting upstairs to disturb his sleep. Of course, hunger tended to trump sleep with him. Always had.

He yawned, stretched and pushed himself up from the nest he'd made for himself. There was a lump across the room, where Kenshin had made his own bed, which showed no signs of stirring. He pulled on his borrowed shirt and ran a hand through his hair, then ambled over and toed Kenshin under his blanket. He got a look for that, from under tangled hair.

"So, I think they're making lunch. You wanna come down with me and get some?"

Kenshin made a non-committal sound and shifted an arm over his eyes.

"That a no?" Sano stood there, waiting.

"I'm not hungry."

"Yeah? When's the last time you ate? You remember?"

A long silence, and Kenshin finally moved his arm to stare up at Sano. He looked about as enthused at the idea of eating as he might about the notion of amputation. "I'll get something later, Sano."

Sano huffed, not entirely understanding how a body could ignore not having eaten for two days, emotional turmoil or not. Nothing had ever had the capacity to dull his appetite. But he allowed Kenshin the courtesy of not arguing the point and went downstairs by himself.

Lunch was indeed underway, most of the household in the courtyard about the task. The chatting paused when he appeared, all eyes turning his way, before he got the smiles and a bevy of enthusiastic greetings. The younger ones, Satya, Natun, and Disha abandoned their work to descend on him, flirting shamelessly. He could understand Kenshin maybe not being up to braving this.

Sano soldiered through, letting them lead him to the low table and offer him a prime place in the pillows. Pakshi came out not long after with her daughter, bearing bowls of food, not all of it recognizable or particularly appealing visually. She asked after Kenshin and Sano shrugged.

"He's not up to much of a big meal."

Pakshi nodded. "I understand. I'll see he gets something later without a houseful of girls to pester him."

"We don't pester, aunt," Natun pouted defensively.

The old sister-in-law, whose name he believed was Vachya, snorted. "Ha. The way the lot of you pant over this one and talk about the other, you'd think there were a shortage of men in India."

"Vachya," Pakshi waved a hand at her. "Don't stir trouble. You embarrass our guest."

The old woman chuckled, not deterred in the least. Sano gave her a look, amused.

Pakshi shook her head, smiling slightly. "There is a favor I would ask of you."

"Sure," Sano was more than willing to work for his board.

"Rajiv usually accompanies the girls to the river with the laundry, but he is behind in his studies and I would keep him here for extra lessons today - -" she ignored the boy's groan and went on. "Would you accompany them to the river? With the unrest from so many come to the city because of the famine in the north, I would feel better if the girls had the escort of a man."

Which was how Sano found himself at the Cooum River, sitting on the broad stone steps that descended into the edge of the water itself watching Satya and two of her cousins while they scrubbed their laundry, laughing and chatting amongst themselves, sari's pulled up to bare brown legs. Hundreds of people gathered here, washing either clothes or bodies in the brown waters. The women not too modest to show a little skin as they pulled sari's up, or down as they worked or bathed. Nothing like Japanese women. Sano rather liked it.

He waded into the water himself, trousers and all, not quite so bold that he was willing to strip down to nothing but the loin clothes that some of the men had, and washed off the dried residue of seawater and sand that the rain on the walk home last night hadn't already rid him of.

Afterwards he sprawled on the steps above the water line and let the warm sun dry his clothes while the girls finished up. They bundled their damp wash up and balanced it atop their heads, graceful even under their ungainly burdens. Sano strolled along, devoid of burden himself - - and he had offered - - taking note of the vendors hawking their wares along the street as they walked.

A few people ran towards them and he craned his neck, taller than most of the people around him, looking down the street towards some sort of disturbance that rippled through the crowd ahead. There were the sounds of shouting and of agitated people. A regiment of city guard, mostly uniformed Indians, but a few Europeans among them, rushed by, almost clipping one of the girls in their hasty passage. Sano caught her arm, keeping her from losing her footing and stared after the retreating soldiers.

"What do you think that's about?"

"Another riot," Satya said. "Someone stealing food from a merchant, who objects and it gets out of hand. The city regiment is not lenient with thieves. Less forgiving still with those the British think incite rebellion against their rule."

"We should go another way." Natun said worriedly.

"I've heard tales," Satya said as they veered down a side street away from the gathering crowd along their original path. "Of bodies littering the streets of towns to the north, where people protested the British rule. Terrible tales."

"Rumors," Natun said unhappily.

"They're not," Satya snapped. "They cling to their rule like tyrants and those that oppose them meet violence. Aunt Pakshi and uncle Narasimha didn't wish to believe, because they were wealthy and supported the British and only saw the kind hand of their masters."

"Shush," Natun said sharply. "Or I'll tell Aunt Pakshi what you say."

Satya pouted, but shut her mouth.

Sano looked back, at the distant figures of more people running from the riot. There was the faint pop of gunfire and the girls started. He clenched his fists, thinking of unarmed crowds and frightened soldiers with guns in their hands.

"C'mon," he urged them to a faster pace, taking the huge bundle from Disha, the smallest of the lot and slinging it over his shoulder. The sooner he had the girls away from the outskirts of the mess back there, the better.

The view from the attic window was spectacular. The Bay of Bengal a sparkling blue expanse of water, dotted here and there with the shapes of ships. It was peaceful sitting there, staring out upon it - - a mindless activity, which required nothing of him, yet drew his thoughts away from other things.

It was there Kenshin was sitting, back against the sill, knees drawn up, when Pakshi rapped softly on the door. She entered, a covered bowl in her hands that he supposed Sano had asked her to bring him. The thought of food made him vaguely sick, yet there was an emptiness in his gut, a parchment thin feeling that made his hands shake just a little, that was sign enough that he'd gone too long with no nourishment. He'd gotten soft. There had been lean days when he'd been wondering after the war, that he'd gone longer with only water to fill his belly.

"Pakshi san." He inclined his head to her and she sat the bowl on the sill at his feet. Simple white rice with a piece of grilled flat bread atop it.

She stood staring out at the bay with him for a long moment, then smiled wistfully. "I spent many days with no appetite for anything but sleep and tears when I lost my first child."

He looked at her sharply, surprised at that admission. "Pakshi san - - I'm sorry."

"If not for Narasimha I might have wasted away, a young mother adrift in her grief. But he was adamant, my husband, even in his own grief, that we go on."

He stared at her, at the lines on her face and imaged the tales they told.

"So we tried again, and we had Nanda, my eldest daughter, and she thrived. As did Rajiv - - who young Rajiv is named for. I lost my fourth child to a fever not a month after he was born. And the fifth was still born - - but I had taken a fever in the weeks before his birth - - so I blame myself for that. Rajiv the elder lost his life in the service of his country. His regiment went south two years past to help with the flooding, and he was killed when the supply wagon he guarded was overturned in a river crossing."

Kenshin sucked in a breath, horrified at that calm confession. At so many young lives lost before their time. "I - - I'm so sorry - -"

"What is - - is," she said. "If my faith is to believed, they will live again. I do not know what yours dictates."

He shut his eyes, having little enough faith of any kind to believe in optimistic fairytales. His beliefs tended towards darker things. Vengeful things.

"We go on - - those of us who survive. What other choice do we have?" she asked.

None, he supposed, since he'd found he had little taste for the notion of death. He couldn't answer her, but she didn't seem to require one of him. She inclined her head with a jangling of earrings, and left him to his contemplation of the bay.

He pressed his palms against his eyes and leaned that way over his knees for a long while, before he blew out a breath and straightened. There was nothing to do but reach for the bowl of rice and flatbread.

Sano came back, after being gone for most of the day. He smelled of river water and spoke of half naked women bathing in public and riots in the streets. Kenshin sat in the window and listened to the sound of his voice.

He declined dinner downstairs and Sano gave him a look verging on a glower, patience running thin. Kenshin held up a placating hand and murmured, 'tomorrow, perhaps.' Which Sano did glower at, but left, muttering under his breath.

Sano returned to the attic room late into the night, this time smelling of curry and wine and perfume, staggering just a little. There had been music and laughter that had drifted up even to the attic. Sano brought with him a small urn and a bowl with rice and a skewer of meat and onions. He thrust them both on Kenshin with a lazy grin and sank down almost on the spot he stood, to sit cross-legged on the floor by the window.

"Pakshi used to be a temple dancer, did you know? She's taught the girls - - and damn, but its something to see."

Kenshin picked at the food, sipping at the wine direct from the urn since Sano had neglected to bring a cup. He found the taste marginally more appealing than he had the last time he'd eaten. Perhaps it was the distraction Sano provided. Sano's half drunken talk soothing in a strange way.

Sano drifted off, and Kenshin sat with his mostly empty bowl and watched him for a while. The flutter of thick lashes on tanned cheeks. The disheveled way that dark hair, which was growing longer than Sano usually wore it, fell this way and that across his forehead and cheek. The smooth skin of youth. Sano had scars, but none of them showed. He tended to heal well, scars fading almost to obscurity. Kenshin knew where they all were, each and every one.

He shut his eyes, not so soothed of a sudden in this room with Sano and the things Sano made him ponder. He rose, silently gathering the urn he'd drained and taking it and the bowl with him as he left the room. The house was quiet now, its occupants retreated to their beds. He traversed the stairs, recalling the creaky ones and avoiding them. He took the bowl to the kitchen off the courtyard and rinsed it in water someone had drawn and left in a basin on the counter. Then he took himself to the well and the little alcove with its wooden bench to cleanse himself. He drew a second bucket to rinse his hair - - he very much suspected there were still grains of sand in it - - and twisted it to wring the water out after. He stood in the courtyard, borrowed clothing damp against his skin, staring up at the square of starry sky above.

He hoped very much that Pakshi was right. That Kenji's young soul would find life again. That Kaoru's would. It was a nice thought. A comforting one. He tried to repress the pessimistic realist inside him that insisted that that was the very reason it was probably not true. The world was simply not that kind and death, he very much suspected - - was simply death.

Sano stirred upon his return, blinking at him blearily. Kenshin went to the blankets he had against the wall by the window, shut his eyes and sat with his back against it. He cracked them open when he heard Sano moving. Sano gathered up a blanket of his own and tossed it down by Kenshin. Kenshin opened his eyes fully and gave him a wary look, in no frame of mind for any notion Sano might be entertaining in his not entirely sober head.

"Sano - - ?"

Sano waved a hand at him, frowning. "Shut up. Give me some credit, will you?" He sank down next to Kenshin, glaring at nothing in particular. He didn't say anything for a long time, then finally - - "I understand a lot more than you think I do, you know?"

Kenshin stared at his hands across his knees and conceded that point. "I know."

"Just so you do."

They sat for a long while, side by side, a cool breeze drifting in from the open window. It smelled like rain might be moving in. Sano finally reached out an arm, draped it across Kenshin's shoulders and pulled him against his side. Kenshin shut his eyes, things fluttering inside him. Guilty things - - that he could allow himself the utter comfort of Sano's physical presence - - that he could crave it - - after having failed Kaoru so utterly. Cold and alone was what he deserved. And then, _fool, take what you can get._ A voice inside his head that wasn't Kaoru's - - Hiko's maybe. Or something Sano would have said. Or maybe just the pragmatic part of himself that knew if he let it, the misery would eat him alive.

Days at Pakshi's turned into weeks and Sano was content enough with the excuse that word still might come of some miraculous discovery of shipwrecked survivors. He didn't think Kenshin believed it. Kenshin knew too much of death to ever believe it. But Kenshin was getting better - - if you considered leaving the retreat of the attic to actually appear in the courtyard with the rest of the household better. Engaging in conversation would have been a whole other realm of recovery, but he wasn't there yet.

The girls loved him though, as girls of any nationality tended to. Maybe it was the quiet manners when he did actually do more than nod at a comment directed towards him, or the aura of tragedy, because he had that in spades. More than likely, though, Sano figured, it was as much the pretty face and the way he moved.

They earned their keep. The roof got patched, the chicken coop in the back garden rebuilt, the garden wall plastered, the interior wall of the well patched, and any number of other things that required a man's touch. If nothing else the labor snared Kenshin's attention. Sano was man enough to admit that he had little talent in the way of woodwork or construction. He could do heavy lifting all the day long, but building a coop that was square on all sides and didn't tilt a little precariously was beyond him. Kenshin was enough of a perfectionist that he couldn't stand idly by and let Sano mangle a job. Though he was far from a master carpenter himself, he was better at it than Sano. Or at least patient enough to think things out before plunging into the project.

They discovered the city, sometimes in the company of one or more of Pakshi's household, sometimes on their own, which Kenshin preferred. Walking in silence and taking in the ambiance of an ancient city that seemed to ever change with the times, and yet still retain the bones of its origin. The temples scattered about were varied, dedicated to multiple deities. The one Pakshi and her family preferred was dedicated to her patron goddess, Shakti the Mother goddess. Pakshi had served in her temple as a young girl before she had married.

Sano picked up a great deal of English and some Hindu. Kenshin learned slower, but then his heart wasn't in it and he was less likely to sit with the women for hours after supper while they chatted before retiring. Sano thought he understood more than he spoke, though. Kenshin was very adept at appearing oblivious when he was anything but.

But as the weeks melted into a month, and then two and it became painfully apparent to all concerned that no word was coming, Sano began to sense a certain restlessness in Kenshin. An unease when he sat too long in the comfort of the house, or had a meal before him that was large and sumptuous, with the company of a household of women that seemed very much content with their addition. As if he thought he might not deserve it.

And Sano, who liked to think he knew Kenshin very well indeed, thought it might be just that. That mindset he'd had before Kaoru had convinced him that he deserved a place to call home as much as any man. The mindset that had set him wondering for close to ten years after the war - - just punishment in his mind - - for the acts he had committed.

But he spoke nothing of it. And it was only Sano's intuition that had the hairs on the back of his arms standing up sometimes, when Kenshin stood too long staring at the haze of distant land beyond the city.

They were on an errand for Pakshi one day, escorting Rajiv to market for supplies. The boy skipped ahead, happy to be out without the watchful eyes of mother or grandmother, while Sano and Kenshin strolled behind, enjoying the mid morning sun and the strong breeze coming in off the bay. Sure sign of a storm on the way, but for the moment it cut through the oppressive, humid heat that seemed a constant in the city.

The market street was lined with shops with colorful awnings under which merchants displayed their wares. Women in their colorful sari's and girls in their pavadas. Men in their traditional sarongs, or their dhoti's, the Sikh's in their turbans as well as the ever present influence of western fashion worn by the English and those that wished to be like them.

Rajiv had run ahead, pausing, as a boy might to gawk at a merchant's display of knives. Curved daggers with ornate sheaths that looked more decorative than practical. Sano gave them a look in passing, not so jaded that a display of weaponry, even small daggers of dubious efficiency did not catch his attention. Kenshin didn't glance that way, his eyes fixed on something in the crowd ahead of them.

The boy skipped ahead, weaving through the crowd and Kenshin called his name sharply of a sudden, but the call was lost in the clamor of the crowd.

"What?" Sano started even as a man in the crowd ahead of them cried out, brandishing a curved blade longer and more wicked than the ones on display. People cried out in fear and surprise, scattering away from the screaming man, even as he descended, weapon raised, upon a crisply uniformed English soldier who'd been browsing the stalls with a lady of European descent upon his arm. The woman screamed and the soldier fumbled for the firearm holstered at his side. Neither wild eyed attacker or startled, gun wielding English officer seemed to notice the boy standing like a fear frozen rabbit between them.

Sano swore, shoving aside people trying to flee the area in an attempt to approach it. But Kenshin was already there, the Indian with the scimitar howling, clutching at his empty hand and what might have been a broken wrist, the cry of the English soldier, as his gun arm was knocked aside, his aim badly disrupted as Kenshin staggered against him, as if he had lost his footing. The boy was on his backside in the dusty street no few yards from where he'd stood in the middle of the conflict, round eyed and stunned.

"Clumsy oaf," the Englishman was cursing Kenshin, who backed away, holding up empty hands, apologizing in his rudimentary English. But it wasn't Kenshin who was his primary concern, but the bearded, wild-eyed Indian, who still clutched his wrist. The crowd gathered around, hemming him in as the soldier called for the city guard, his gun pointed threateningly at the man who'd tried to attack him. The man's sword, surprisingly enough, was lodged in the wooden beam of the second story awning of the building behind them.

Sano hauled Rajiv up by the collar. "You okay, kid?"

The boy nodded mutely, staring with no few members of the rest of the crowd brave enough to have stayed, at the sword still quivering minutely above their heads. There were murmurs in the crowd, as more uniformed soldiers arrived, of Thagi.

"I don't know what happened?" Rajiv finally admitted shakily. "I was there - - and then, I was not."

"Yeah, funny that." Sano looked over his head at Kenshin who had worked his way out from the center of the conflict and was weaving his way through the outer edges back towards the two of them.

"What's Thagi?" Sano asked and the boy looked up at him with white around the rims of his eyes, frightened.

"No good is what they are. Thieves and assassins who kill for the honor of Kali. They're few now - - because of the English. But they appear now and then causing trouble. They hate the British."

He glanced at Kenshin, who shrugged a shoulder. "He did appear to have a grudge."

"You don't see them in the city much," Rajiv said, craning his neck as the crowd dispersed, the city guard having hauled the sword wielding Thagi away. The British officer and his lady had also melted into the crowd. "I've heard Auntie Vachya say they used to roam the countryside, strangling travelers and cutting out their eyes in the name of Kali, then stealing all their belongings."

"Ouch." Sano placed a hand on the boy's shoulder and got him moving. The merchant they'd been sent to visit was no more than a few blocks down. "Sounds like the British taking them out was a good thing."

The boy nodded in agreement.

Rajiv stayed very close the rest of the trip, carrying his sack of rice, while Kenshin shouldered the cask of wine, and Sano the sacks of grain and flour. The women were appropriately shocked and relieved when they returned to the house and the boy told them what had happened. Rajiv was pressed for some time to his mother's bosom, while she bemoaned ever letting him from her sight again.

The storm did come that night, blowing in off the bay and pelting the city with rain and winds. Two days and when the sun next came out, the city was waterlogged and already high humidity became unbearable.

Sano came back to the house, as shirtless and barefoot as Rajiv, the both of them having accompanied a few of the girls to the river, to find Kenshin holding some conversation with Pakshi in the courtyard. Kenshin bowed to her when they burst into the house, the chattering lot of them, and retreated. Pakshi forced her frown into a smile, and welcomed them back, offering watered wine to ease their thirsts.

Sano stood in the midst of the girls and watched Kenshin ascend the stairs, the hairs at the back of his neck standing on end.

Sano was happy. Sano had a place that he was welcome - - more than welcome - - that he was needed - - that he might build a family. Kenshin wanted that for him. Wanted Sano happy more than any other concern he had left. Wanted Sano safe - - as safe as this world would allow - - at any rate.

Sano deserved that. Deserved more than his company, when he wasn't sure if he could ever be whole again. He felt - - displaced and fractured and not all the warm comfort of Pakshi's house could ease it. He thought it might even be making it worse. He couldn't stay. The grief, the guilt, the unease churned under his skin like grains of sand itching for him to just - - move. To walk and not stop walking. Again. Like he'd felt before. Owning nothing but the clothes on his back and the sword at his hip. Calling no place home. No companions to ease the solitary nature of the road.

Only he had no sword. He'd given that to the sea. And the companion he had - - he wanted safe and sound away from the ill luck his presence seemed to bring. Only he didn't - - oh, he surely did not wish the lack of Sano and Sano's bad fortune with money, and Sano's tendency to provoke conflict and Sano's sour temper when his stomach was empty.

A quandary to be sure. But an easy one. Sano safe was worth more than his own selfishness. So he did what needed to be done and told himself that was all there was to it.

He gave Pakshi the courtesy of forewarning. Thanked her for her generosity and wished well upon her house. He waited until Sano was out of the house, accompanying the girls and Rajiv, to see the lights at the nearby temple, then gathered what few things he had. The most serviceable of the clothing that Pakshi had given him. A battered travel pack with the bare essentials that a man on a long road would need. A knife that she had given him that had belonged to her son. An old blade in need of sharpening, eight inches long, with a plain sheath. For his needs, it would do.

It was past dusk when he left, bowing again to Pakshi and old Vachya who had come out with her sister-in-law to watch him leave. Pakshi handed him a very small pouch, which he tried to return, but she folded his fingers about it, promising it was but a pittance. Enough to see him fed for the next few days, should he need it. He hated accepting it, but standing there arguing with her was pointless, with old Vachya glaring and calling him a fool.

He knew the way out of the city. North, to the city gates, which were open still, to late travelers. Beyond were fields of rice and imported corn and the outlying villages of the farmers who tended them. There was a tributary of one of the rivers that cut through the city running parallel to the road, and smaller fingers of that feeding the fields.

Other than out of the city, he had no destination in mind. There were roads that led to places. He would figure it out as he went. It was a plan that had served him well enough in the past. He tried to ignore the pang of unease that stirred in his gut at setting out on it now. Tried to ignore the regret because his loss would surly be someone's gain.

He stared with intensity at the distant dark haze of foothills, easy to see past the miles of lush flatland with its web work of tributaries and flooded paddies. There were other travelers on the road. A tiny speck of a man leading an ox. A small cart pulled by an old man heading towards the city. A group of men with no baggage at all, workers perhaps or some of those poor that gravitated towards Madras in hopes of food or work. Travel worn men who eyed him with keen speculation as they passed on the road. Out of reflex he went to lay his hand upon the hilt of a sword that wasn't there and took a breath, clenching his fist over nothing.

They passed each other peacefully enough on the wide dirt road between paddies. Trees swayed on one side, rustling in the breeze. A dog lay in the intersection of a small path leading off to a tiny shack off the side of the road. It growled low in its throat as he passed. A gentle warning to keep his distance.

Its dark eyes flicked beyond him, towards the road he had traveled, ears pricked at the sound of another traveler moving up the road. Keener ears by far than Kenshin, who glanced over his shoulder and barely saw the shape of a lone man some ways back, steadily making progress in a distance devouring lope.

He turned back around, not slowing his pace. He shut his eyes as he walked though, breathing deep, heart thudding in something that might very well have been relief.

It took perhaps half an hour for Sano to catch up with him. He had a pack over his shoulder and a pissed off look on his face. The sound of his teeth grinding was audible as he slowed his jog to a walk and stalked beside Kenshin. Kenshin said nothing, hardly knowing what it was he actually did want anymore, too many things churning about inside him to have a clue. Sano happy. Sano safe. Sano and the temptation Sano brought with him safely distant from _him_, because when he got too close he could not shake that terrible guilt of the betrayal he'd dealt_ her_. Sano's company. Sano.

"You're a bastard, you know that?" Sano finally stabbed a finger at him, maneuvering around to stand in his path, stalling his forward progress. "You slip out of the house without even the courtesy of telling them goodbye. What sort of asshole does that?"

"It would only have been painful. For everyone."

Sano let out an explosive exhalation of breath. "Right. And slipping away like a thief in the night because you're too much of a coward to deal with a little emotion isn't hurtful at all."

"I spoke to Pakshi," Kenshin said softly.

"Really. Pakshi. Figured she'd tell me the news with the rest of the house, huh?"

"I thought - - I thought it better that way."

"You thought - -? You son of a - -" Sano growled and swung at him. Kenshin just shut his eyes and let the open palm of his hand connect, let Sano get out the frustration and the anger that had the veins in his neck standing out.

And it hurt. He staggered, ear ringing from the impact of palm against the side of his head. Sano had very little concept of just how strong he was.

"Are you completely addled?" Sano shouted at him.

Kenshin barely heard it through the ringing. "Possibly now," he muttered, rubbing gingerly at the spot.

"Damn you, Kenshin. You really thought you were gonna get away with leaving me behind? Without even a fucking word? Like I don't mean anything more to you than any of those girls back at the house? You damned ass. I should of just let you go you and to hell with you."

"You should have," Kenshin agreed softly.

"Why? Who are you punishing? Me? You? The both of us?"

"I'm not - -" Kenshin snapped his eyes up to meet Sano's in denial. "Not you - "

Sano nodded, sneering. "Right. You then. I figured that. I wanna kick your ass so bad right now."

"I'm sorry, Sano."

"What you are is frustrating. And so damned tangled up you don't know up from down anymore, much less the difference between a good decision and a bad one."

Kenshin looked away at that, not entirely sure Sano wasn't in the right there.

"We had this conversation, Kenshin." Sano reminded him. "More than once. Thought I'd made myself clear."

"Sano - -" his voice broke and he had to swallow and try again. "I don't know what I want - - I don't know that I can be - - content again. I let myself for a little while and - - I paid for it. Kaoru did and - - and Kenji. You even. Go back to Pakshi's - - go back to Japan - - find the home you deserve, Sano."

He moved around Sano, taking to the road again. Sano stood for a moment, fists clenching so hard that Kenshin heard the joints popping.

"What about _your_ home?" Sano snapped, stalking after him. "You've still got one, remember? You just gonna abandon it and leave everybody back there wondering?"

The very idea of going back to the dojo made Kenshin short of breath. Of going back to the place where Kaoru and Kenji's essence dwelled. The place where Kenji had been born, where Kaoru and he had shared a room and a bed and a life. No crevice or corner of that place wouldn't destroy him. Bad enough when he'd only thought them kidnapped and believed with all his heart that he'd get them back. To return there now - - was beyond him. It was cowardice and he didn't care.

"There's no more home for me, Sano. Not there. I can't - - not where we lived - - not - - " He swallowed, vision wavering for a moment, before he blinked it clear again. "Yahiko will take care of the dojo. He'll need a place of his own. He's a master now of the Kamiya Kasshin-ryu style. He can carry on Kaoru's father's legacy. The widow is there and her daughter. They'll feed Cat - -"

His voice broke again so he stopped talking. He'd said enough. He felt sick.

"Yeah," Sano said bitterly. " Guess they'll all be fine thinking we're all dead then."

"You could return and tell them."

"Fuck you, Kenshin."

Sano stalked along in silence for a while after that. Then after a good half mile of muddy road, he said through clenched teeth. "You know what? You're right in one thing - - home's a funny thing. Without people there that matter - - its nothing more than a roof and four walls. _You're_ my people. Where you're at - -that's home for me. Whether it's in a nice snug house with plenty of food or starving our asses off on the road. You don't get that - - well, I got no problem pounding it into your head."

Sano looked at him, as if he were expecting something from him and it felt like there was something huge and ungainly stuck in his throat. He worked to swallow it down, bereft of words. Sano had said enough for the both of them. So he simply nodded. One quick jerk of his chin that was all he could manage, before lowering his head and letting his hair fall over his eyes to hide the embarrassment of water spiked lashes.

"Think you're gonna leave _me_ behind - - asshole," Sano muttered, reiterating his initial thoughts on the matter.

"It was a mistake."

"You think?" Sano snorted. Then after a bit. "So, where we headed?"

"I don't know."

Sano stuffed his thumbs through the sash at his waist. "Okay. I've been that road before. It's a big country. A lot of places to see."

Not much now though, with night fully fallen and only a few stars out to keep the whole of the world from stark darkness. The road was clear enough though, for a pair of men used to traveling at ungainly hours. And the sun would rise again soon enough and illuminate the way.

No matter the state of the rest of the world, it always did.

Epilogue

The Pang Nyu was a Chinese junk out of Kiungchow. Her crew lovingly called her the Fat Lady, for her bottom was broad and her construction sturdy. In the lean years of the second opium war she'd been a steadfast pirate of British and Dutch vessels. Her voyages now were mostly mercantile, making the slow trade route south east of China to the rich ports of Bangkok, Singapore and Rangoon and even distant Calcutta when the money was good.

In her seventy years of service, she'd weathered war and storms and political upheaval. She'd had four captains all of the same family linage, and a crew of sons and grandsons, brothers, cousins and uncles. Experienced sailors all, and still the storm that had ripped across the Bay of Bengal had cracked the mainmast and flooded the hold and likened to sink the old lady, crew and all. It was only by the grace and the good will of accumulated ancestors that she weathered it and limped into port at Calcutta.

Two days to repair the mast and it took the funds that otherwise would have finished filling her hold with trade goods. It was a disgruntled crew that headed home with a half empty hold. A disgruntled crew that four days later came upon a tiny boat, adrift and for all appearances abandoned, caught in southbound currents. There was still enough of the pirate in the old captain that he swept down upon it with salvage in mind. At the very least it was a dingy of European design that could bring a few yuan.

At first, when they closed in they thought they heard the squall of some gull, swept far, far from land, but as they pulled in beside the little boat and threw out lines to capture it, they saw instead the face of a child, sun reddened and twisted in the midst of a tantrum as it sat in the bottom of the boat, clutching the robes of a woman who lay very still next to it. There was a man as well, who sprawled equally as silent, dressed in the garb of a well to do Westerner.

As men of the Pang Nyu scrambled down lines to the tiny boat, they called up to the faces looking down from above that the two adults had every appearance of severe dehydration. The single flask on its leather strap that hung around the child's neck, long empty of water. There were no other rations on the boat. Only a tarp that had been constructed at the prow, that the woman lay half under, shielding her from the unyielding sun.

A woman, if her garb were any indication, of Japanese origin. The man was clearly European, though there was just the slightest hint of Asian tilt to his closed eyes. There was gold in a purse in his pocket though, and a fine pocket watch, which the crew tossed up to the captain, who took an experimental bite of a foreign coin. Gold was gold, though, no matter the origin and could be melted into whatever form a man wanted. And a man that carried a purse of gold on his person was no doubt a man of means and men of means might be worth more gold if handled properly.

The captain signaled and his crew went to work transferring the occupants of the small boat up to the Pang Nyu. The man roused first, as water was forced down his throat, blinking and sputtering weakly, croaking in his indecipherable English, desperate in his flailing until he saw the woman and the child also under the care of the crew on deck.

She came around more slowly, pale skin sun reddened and blistered in places, but still an attractive enough young woman, who clutched the child to her and cried, when she was sensible enough to realize he was there at her side.

"Japanese?" The captain asked, standing over her, casting her and the boy in his shade. She looked up at him dazedly and nodded.

"English?" The captain cast a dark look at the man, with his rumpled western suit and his mustache above a stubbled chin.

"Yes, I am English. We're indebted to you for our rescue," the man answered for himself in Japanese better than the captain's own.

"Rich?" the captain asked.

The man hesitated, glancing at the woman and child, uncertainly, wise enough not to blurt out such things in the company of strangers. But the gold in his pockets told the tale well enough.

"There might be a reward," the man said slowly. "For your kindness."

The captain glanced at the girl, who had her arms around the child. "And her? Is she your woman?"

"No!" the man seemed offended. An honorable man. "She is under my protection, though and by God, I'll see her and her son safely home. I promise a reward to you, if you drop us at the nearest port. Where are we?"

"West of Rangoon. But we'll make no port until home. We can talk of our reward there."

"Where is home?" the man asked warily.

"Kiungchow."

"China?" The man looked to the girl and the child she clutched in her lap. She looked back with wide, reddened eyes. Finally he nodded, accepting the inevitable, pushing himself painful to his feet. A tall man, though young, despite the years the sunburn and the mustache tried to add to his age.

"Good enough. Better than dying in a life raft with none the wiser."

"Yes," she said softly, bowing her head respectfully at the captain.

"I am Ian Fletcher," the Englishman said extending a hand that the captain only stared at curiously, until the man withdrew it uncertainly. "The lady is Kaoru and was taken by force from her home in Japan, along with her son. It is my duty, as it is the duty of any man of honor, to see her safely back to it."


End file.
